


Stumbling

by LastFadingSmile



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Despair, Developing Relationship, Doubt, Drama, Drama Llama, F/M, Fade Dream(s), Family Drama, Flashbacks, Game Spoilers, Gap Filler, Gen, I May Need To Start Day Drinking, Introspection, Mild Blood, Mild Language, Original Character(s), Personal Canon, Romance, Slow As Balls To Update, Slow Burn, The Author Regrets Everything, What Was I Thinking?, Wordy, blah blah
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-01 09:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 33
Words: 93,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2767541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LastFadingSmile/pseuds/LastFadingSmile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Note: I have no idea what I'm doing. What began as a standalone piece has turned into a mosaic of a bunch of different ideas. I was never very good at finding all the pieces. Perhaps it will just be content as a bunch of random thoughts, loosely woven together with a thread of introspection. Perhaps there will be cake. Who knows what the future will bring? Sure as hell not me.</p><p>-----</p><p>In the aftermath of Haven, Olivia Trevelyan finds herself struggling to keep afloat on the tide. While it seems everyone else has placed their faith in her, her own faith lies in ruin, and she stands caught between the security of her old life and a new one she doesn't understand. Doubt, sadness and loss abound, and the thing she wants the most in it all is the thing she's the most afraid to reach for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She wondered if she would ever feel warm again.

Winter had gnashed its teeth relentless upon her bones ever since Haven. ‘Haven’ indeed; a bitter stain of irony in the back of her throat; a rush and roar of darkness and regret. The weariness of her ordeal had scarcely left her. It was a constant ache, a throbbing fatigue in limbs that weighed of lead, with her frayed and feathering resolve the only thing that kept her moving through the cold debris in its wake. Still at night she would flail out of sleep, gasping for breath as she drowned under a mountain of ice and rock, screaming in the dark at the embers in the fireplace and praying they did not go out. Desperate for someone to find her, just to know she was not alone. In her tower, high up in the sky, no one ever did.  
  
Olivia shuddered and rubbed feebly at her arms, folded tightly across her chest against the wind that tore down through the mountain passes in gusting waves as regular as the oceans of home; a callous mock. Run home, foolish girl, she could almost hear it whisper. Run on back across the sea, back to the secure walls of your precious little noble life, a small life plentiful in everything but the guilt and responsibility that mounted now upon her. And she wanted to. If only for the simple kiss of the high summer sun on her skin that, once golden, was now paling with each day she spent in these frigid mountains.  
  
Still, she could not bring herself to head inside. Not to the Great Hall where everyone looked to her for answers to questions she was busy asking herself. Not to the garden, where the clerics looked to her with a frightening reverence that truth would not abate. Not to the tavern, where everyone looked through her as if she was not there at all. The cold and the sleepless nights were bad enough, but it was the weight of looking people in the eyes that truly exhausted her. Did she even exist anymore? When was the last time someone even addressed her by name, she wondered? Herald this. Inquisitor that. Who was Olivia Trevelyan? Was this what Cole felt, she wondered? There but not there. Strange even amongst friends. A stone thrown into a pond, evidence of her actions rippled across Thedas, but she was long ago sunk. She was all things to all people—a saint, a saviour, a survivor, a story larger than life—but nothing to anyone. All she wanted to be was herself. Someone to someone.  
  
Behind her, the tower door burst open with a squealing clamour of ancient wood and neglected hinges, startling her from her reflection, and out of it stalked the Commander. With both hands gripped about his face, he was oblivious to her as he rubbed at his eyes and paced, back and forth, back and forth across the stone rampart, with the agitation of some caged predator held against his will. A low murmur at first lost in the wind grew into a guttural growl and then a frightening roar, more animal than anything she had ever heard in the wilderness. Hands clenched tight into leather-bound fists, he beat them against his deep, dark frown.  
  
“Cullen!” she alarmed, taking a step toward him on a swell of concern.  
  
With just a word he transformed from howling predator into startled prey and they both froze, his hands fallen away from his face to observe her. “Inquisitor,” he replied, voice cracked, broken and tattered, glass in his throat. Olivia winced. The word still felt wrong to her ear; ill-fitting, like a child playing dress-up and stumbling about in shoes far too big for her feet.  
  
“Is…everything all right?” A trite question; clearly everything was not.  
  
A tense moment of stillness passed between them, he almost sizing her up, she hesitant to move lest it scare him off. Then he relaxed just enough to unball his fists and uncurl his scowling lip. “I…yes,” he finally said. “Nothing you need concern yourself with.”  
  
With a nod and a wan smile, Olivia turned once again away to lean upon the cold stone of the parapet, defeated but choosing not to press him on it. It seemed the way of things ever since she took up that damned mantle. Every conversation was a carefully choreographed show, revealing only as much as it needed to and never more; clear in purpose, maximised in efficiency, devoid of distraction, compartmentalised. Broken down. Set apart. Removed. Just like her.  
  
She waited expectantly for the door creak open behind as he retreated back inside, but rather to her surprise, he joined her there at the wall. Propped upon his elbows, his steel and leathers groaned like weary joints as he arched his back in a deep stretch. Up close, she could see clearly how drawn he appeared; skin ashen with a sheen of sweat across his brow, eyes dark with unrest, hair a gripped and tussled mess. There was a shake in his hands that made her wonder when he had last eaten—come to think of it, she had never seen him take a proper meal in the dining hall. Perhaps noticing her noticing, he coughed self-consciously as he pushed upright and gripped the rock with both hands, stilling them. Olivia made a deliberate effort to look away, if only to stop her own hands from reaching out to smooth down his hair or wipe his brow, or any number of other terrible things they might do if left to their own devices.  
  
“Here barely a fortnight and they’re still arriving by the day,” she said with a nod down toward the glacial basin, offering it as a distraction to them both.  
  
Where once a simple military camp had sat now sprawled a veritable city of tents that looked to consume in white canvas all of the blue icescape. It had started with Haven, but now refugees from all over western Ferelden looked to the Inquisition for protection, bringing with them their families, their burdens, their hopes and their faith and laying it all upon the Inquisitor’s doorstep. As if she didn’t have enough of her own. In the absence of a true Divine, they sought divinity in Olivia, and would not hear of her being a pretender, even if Josephine would permit her to tell them the truth, which she had not.  
  
“What must they think when they arrive to see that we’re barely more than refugees ourselves?”  
  
“We are a little more organised than _that_ ,” he answered, a little defensively.  
  
Olivia sighed. “Perhaps it’s just me, then.” A chill overcame her, and she pulled her arms even more tightly against her. It was a losing effort.  
  
“Well…I did say ‘a little.’”  
  
Sometimes when she looked at him, there was a bleakness in his eyes that grieved her. What had happened in Kirkwall had rocked all the Free Marches. Her own family had been stalwart allies of the Order through the chaos that followed, feeding and housing a good number of travelling knights when the Circles fell to ruin, but their involvement was incidental. Cullen had been there, on the front line of the first revolt and everything that happened after, everything that had led the world to this mad brink; burdens upon burdens upon burdens. Scars upon scars. He had lived through the events that had been the fodder of dinner stories in her family home. While these days he buried himself under work to distract, the haunted look in his eyes betrayed him.  
  
In that moment though, his gaze was clear and focused, and the scar he wore at his lip all but disappeared into one of his half-smiles—full with warmth—that belied whatever troubles had led him out here. Olivia could not help herself from returning it in kind, or from wishing that he would smile more often. Instead, the Commander’s smile faltered as he cleared his throat and looked away.  
  
“I...um...I often forget how far from home you are.”  
  
“I'd scarcely been away before now. I once travelled with my father and brothers to Tantervale for the Grand Tourney, many years ago. I was nine or ten I think. My older brother was competing. It was just before he underwent his Vigil. The grand cleric gave him special permission, at my father’s urging, of course.” She smiled at the memory. It was the last time all of her brothers had been together, before duty scattered had them to the winds for twenty years. “Maker’s breath. Has it been so long?” Olivia whispered to herself.  
  
“Your brother is a templar?” There was a sharp edge to his tone, and his whole body seemed to tense up for a moment, gloved fingers straining against leather bonds as they contorted.  
  
“Two of them. Father got his heir, and his spare; the rest of us are for the Maker. My younger sisters are, well, sisters, fully ordained. And I am…a quiet disappointment to my mother,” she said with a wry smile. “But I served in my own way, in the archives. Ostwick Chantry has a rather impressive library.”  
  
“That’s, um…” His eyebrows raised and then just as quickly collapsed into a frown of concentration, head bobbing slightly as he counted. “…A large family,” he finished diplomatically.  
  
“Yes, my father takes his duty to the Maker quite seriously.” Olivia laughed. It felt good to laugh; even just to talk. Self-indulgent as it may be, talking about her family had the momentary side-effect of reminding her that she had one, once. Before. Perhaps she might again someday.  
  
“Perhaps I should write to thank him for his piety, if it brought you here,” he replied with a chuckle, but then quickly added, “On behalf of the Inquisition. Of course.”  
  
“Of course.” It would be absurd to think he meant anything else.  
  
She sighed listlessly then, missing home fiercely, in the way that all those who have ever taken home for granted must. What she would not trade for just one day. A visit to the evergreens, perhaps, where she had spent so many days of her youth at hunt with her father. The gentle rock of her courser beneath her, sunlight filtering through the impossibly high canopy, the crisp scent of spruce needles crushed underfoot. The stillness and the quiet, the patience and the discipline. Sometimes they would spend hours in one place, in near-perfect silence, waiting for game. With barely a word, he taught her everything he knew—much to her mother’s chagrin. How to track, to read the sky, to navigate the unforgiving sameness of the forest. How to hold the longbow, to nock the arrow, to draw the string, _when_ to draw and how far. How to kill clean, so that the animal did not suffer—better meat that way, he said, and better pelts—and then how to clean the kill. In those early years she sported painful blisters on her swollen fingers for days after a hunt, and her arms would ache and burn fiercely from the strain and repetition. “If you want your fingers to get better, Livvy, then _you_ must get better,” her father would tell her, unapologetic. The world was just that simple to the Bann. There was nothing that could not be made right with the appropriate amount of effort. And so she did, with patience and discipline and many, many more welts, blisters, bruises, torn muscles and fingernails in the interim.  
  
Now she used all those things her father had taught her to kill demons and darkspawn and far more mundane, far more human varieties of monster. Instead of blisters she now had calluses from overuse, and a dull ache in her shoulder that never left. Her father had taught her to read the sky, but now she could barely look at it. Nor did she have to, as long as the aptly-called anchor pulsed in her palm, in a constant reminder of everything that was wrong with the world. But even if she could not look up, it seemed she could not seem to stop herself from looking back.  
  
“I wonder sometimes if I will ever see home again,” she said bleakly. “Even if Corypheus doesn’t kill me, things won’t ever be the same.”  
  
“No,” he replied, with a frankness that sunk as deep into her heart as any arrow she’d ever loosed. Cullen frowned. That sadness was starting to creep back into his stare, that faraway-but-all-too-close consternation, that brooding dark. “After Kirkwall, I did not think I would ever see Ferelden again. To be honest, I’m not sure I have. I grew up not far to the south of here and yet…” He shook his head and shrugged; he did not need to finish.  
  
“What happened to the world, Cullen? A Blight, and the war, now…whatever this is?” Olivia could not manage more than a whisper. To speak it loudly made it all too real. “There were children in the courtyard yesterday playing at ‘Mages and Templars’, with sticks for staves and swords. The world is ending all around them and they make a game of it.” A bark of a laugh caught in molasses before it could escape, and her eyes began to well. “And I honestly don’t know if that terrifies me, or gladdens me.”  
  
“Things were certainly simpler when we were children.” Cullen expelled a heavy breath.  
  
“I long for that innocence.” Discreetly she flicked away a loose tear. “I have been devoted to my faith, Cullen. I'm not perfect but I've tried to do good, always, and see to the good in others even when it seems unclear. With all that has happened, I thought, how could I not still believe? But Corypheus...what if he tells the truth? What if I got it wrong? If the Maker is up there, what have we done to deserve this? What have _I_ done? What if all that has happened isn’t proof that the Maker exists, but rather proof that he doesn’t? And what has my life been for? Nothing?” The words—those that did not get stuck in the back her throat—came tumbling out wrapped up in an irrational tangle of dread, strings she could not cut away from her soul.  
  
“Stop,” he said, in his Commander voice, stern and forceful, a voice that disavowed disobedience. So focused was she on his voice that she almost didn’t notice the hand upon her shoulder, but once she did, she barely heard him at all. “Corypheus is a monster, and his days are numbered, I promise you that. You cannot let the ravings of a madman erode your faith. And you are not ‘nothing’. If you can believe only one thing, then let it be that much.”  
  
Olivia nodded weakly, her eyes jammed closed against the dam that threatened to break. As she breathed through it, she fixated on his thumb, tracing a small arc back and forth across the curve of her shoulder, tender and just a little too familiar. Fingers pressing, warm and reassuring, firm and commanding, only scant layers of wool and leather separating skin from skin. When at last he withdrew a short lifetime later, it was not a clean break, but rather those gloved fingers sketched a shy path down her back before retreating, marking her as surely as if he was lava to her ice. As she stood there, eyes closed and shivering not from cold, she imagined those fingers slipping down about her waist, and the heat of his body at her back as she was enveloped in his embrace. The kiss of his stubble against her cheek; the tingle of his kiss against her neck. The soft musk of his furs, worn leather cut with polished steel; a scent fierce and masculine but also earthy and comforting, arcane, like the old tomes she once surrounded herself with. Safe. Home.  
  
“Cullen, I—” she gasped, turning her head away so that he could not see her sudden blush. She what? She...found herself unable to be near him without wanting to be ever nearer? She...requested detailed written reports because what he said in the war room was lost to her marvelling at the way his mouth formed his words rather than the words themselves? Or perhaps she should tell him that the only thing that soothed her in the dead of winter night when she was thrown from sleep by fear was the memory of him lifting her out of certain death and carrying her back to the light? Which fool thing was about to fall unfettered from her mouth now?  
  
“I…should not have burdened you with this. I’m sure you have a thousand things to do.”  
  
“I—” He sighed shortly, swallowed whatever it was he had thought to say. “Yes. Of course.”  
  
Olivia nodded, resolute, and pushed away from the parapet. “Good evening, Commander.”  
  
“Inquisitor,” he answered automatically.  
  
As she crossed the landing to the courtyard steps, she could feel his eyes upon her back just as hotly as his fingers, and it was all she could do to stop her leaden limbs from breaking pace into a run. Had she not gotten what she wanted? Was that not what had brought her here in the first place, to this specific part of Skyhold, when she could have gone to a hundred different places for solitude? She had brought herself to his doorstep, hoping to garner his notice, hoping for just a moment to be seen as something more, not just to _someone_ , but to him. Now as the low, cold sun sunk ever quicker behind the mountains and another long, dark night lay before her, she found that there was a far worse feeling than not existing. Now she found herself fleeing, terrified at the possibility that he might actually see her for what she really was.  
  
Just a fool girl playing pretend, stumbling about in too-big shoes, hoping not to fall.


	2. Faltering

Darkness surrounds, presses down, crushes the air from his lungs. Air that is stagnant, and hangs thick with the stench of blood. More than a scent; a taste, a ringing itch on his tongue that will not wash away, no matter how hard he swallows. Is it his blood? It hardly matters now. All the blood just runs together. All the agony. Aching, searing, bulging flesh. Contorted and wrong, rent from the bone and bursting through skin, twisted and raw. Limbs not made to bend that way. Bitter tears, salty and stinging down his face. They will not stop. How much more can there be inside of him?

Whispers like fingers in his mind, clawing and dragging needles down to his bare soul, leaving cuts that will never heal. He cannot make them out and it is driving him slowly mad. Or not slowly at all. Perhaps he is already there. Why do they keep him alive? Why does he go on surviving? Every moment is a torment and yet he cannot allow himself reprieve. That is his madness. Why not just die with the rest of them? What as he left to live for? Everything is gone. Everyone. Their screams echo through the tower, endless. Clanging of steel, scraping against the stone, a shiver in his spine. He is the last, and they stare at him with their dead eyes, black and cold and empty as darkest night, accusing and so cold they burn right through his battered, bloodied armor right to the bone.  
  
It was supposed to protect.  
  
Why did it not protect?  
  
Maker. _Maker_. Are you there?  
  
Piece by piece they strip him away, layer by layer with their hooks, digging at all that he is, rending him of all he might ever be, until there is nothing left but an empty shell of steel clattered to the floor. Left to rot, forgotten in the rubble of some desolate tower on the lake. Sealed up and nameless for the rest of time, all will forget what happened here. It will become myth, a story around a campfire. A cautionary tale, a legend told to children to make them behave. He is lost; why do not they just leave him? Pain wracks his body. Wounds that will not close, tearing ever wider as he expends himself upon the walls that bind, looking for a weakness.  
  
But the only weakness in this place is his.  
  
They took his family long ago. Carved his childhood out of his brain. Games before dinner with his sisters. Roughhousing with his brother. The name-day sweetbreads his mother used to bake, a special treat to look forward to once a year. Shoeing horses with his father. The quiet of the lake. Smell of dry grass in the summer heat, parched earth drinking up the fall rains. Even the village dog he used to feed scraps to. Every good memory he had brought with him, everything that had sustained him through the years of anxiety and doubt, through the loneliness and the melancholy when faith alone could not nurture him. Everything he had ever loved, taken away and rent asunder, broiled upon demonic flame, offered up on a platter as fodder for the horde. Demons growing fat upon his memories, consuming until they could eat no longer and then disgorging it all, vile and tainted, twisted and broken.  
  
But he held on still to the deepest part, the secret parts, the quiet parts he never spoke out loud.  
  
Until they found those too….  
  
There was another once. The air crackled around her, lightning in the squall, she was dangerous and beautiful and she haunted his dreams for so long he could barely remember a time before her. But she was a distant memory, a tide ebbing on a shore he no longer walked. Desolate and abandoned, there was no room left in him for those old regrets. He has new regrets. Regrets he is yet to make.  
  
And they found her too. Was nothing sacred? Was there nothing inside of him that he could keep whole?  
  
She appears out of the darkness, out of shadow, out of nothing. Her chestnut hair falls about her shoulders, refined and effortless. Her eyes, he has never seen their like, neither blue nor green nor gold but somehow all things at once, like light glinting off the surface of the clearest, calmest lake. Inviting, enchanting, reminding him of home. She brings him back to a place he had thought lost to time. She is the only spot of colour in this eternal grave.  
  
And here she stands only inches before him, draped in a veil of gossamer silks that leave little of her to his imagination, and he tries to look anywhere else than at the outline of her curves. Instead he centres on her face, on her chin, on the snaking scar at the corner of her mouth that trails down her neck; a stunning imperfection he has daydreamed about caressing with thumb and mouth alike. She smiles as he continues to stare, his mind blank of everything except her. Her lips, they are an invitation, a gilt smile glistening in the low light.  
  
“You desire this,” she says. But there is a wrongness in her words. When she speaks truly, it is power and it is grace. It is an exaltation on his soul. Divinity. But this is hollow. Soulless. Stripped of her purity. Tainted. It is not her.  
  
“N-no…” he stammers, having to force the word from his willful mouth.  
  
Her smile twists into an ugly grin, something wretched and shallow, and he sees now, sees what she is. Dishonest are those eyes, a vile imitation weaving lies into his mind like smoke, untraceable; they do not belong to her. None of this belongs to her, just another demon poorly wearing her face. It casts the silken veil from its nakedness, hands sliding over the feminine form it possesses in a slow dance. It is not her. It cannot be. Allure. A lure.  
  
“This body belongs to you. These hands are your hands…”  
  
A desirous sigh escapes the lips that are not hers, and he knows it, and yet his traitor body, it aches in a way he had long forsaken, a secret, forbidden, frustrating way. Skin craving skin, hands tingling at the thought of her beneath him, and he feels his resolve unravelling. It is not her, but it will never be her, she is outside his reach. Would it be so awful to just give in? Even a fantasy can be fulfilling. There would be no more fighting. No more pain. He could just…  
  
 _Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and…_  
  
“Do not falter,” he whispers hoarsely, an echoing command. No. He shakes his head adamantly. “I can’t. I won’t, I _will_ not…” He falls to his knees, hanging his head with the shame of what he has wrought, of what he has allowed them to do to her, what his foul and fool longing has manifested. She is unworthy of this. And he of her. “I will endure.” For her sake.  
  
“Fool boy,” he hears then, a voice he know all too well, the same voice that has always been there in the back of his mind, in his dreams, in his waking hours. It is the voice of his doubts, of his fears, of his hate.  
  
Something primal ignites in him at the sound, and he hauls his weary body back to his feet in defiance. An instrument of pure rage, he beats with renewed fury upon the walls that hold him, knuckles bursting open with the effort. Uldred laughs as he emerges out of the shadow. He towers above, soulless eyes shining red in the odd light of this place, grinning with sharpened teeth, caked with gore and strips of flesh left from the feast. Uldred’s massive hands settle upon her shoulders, this spectre of his desire, his fingernails like talons that sink into her tender flesh. She is so fragile in the monster’s grip, so small.  
  
His mind is on fire, a war raging inside of him. “No!” he screams, throwing the weight of his whole body against the wall; it shimmers and ripples as he is repelled, like it too is laughing. He knows it is not her, not really, but he cannot help himself. “Leave her!”  
  
Uldred cackles on, unabated. “You cannot even comprehend your uselessness. You think yourself strong because you survive. You survive because you are weak. Too pathetic to die with honor like your brothers. You are the consequence of a pride squandered. The power you could possess…” With a mere twist of his fingers, a terrifying lack of effort, Uldred snaps her neck in two. The sound echoes about the chamber, a sickening pop of shattering bone, and she crumples to the ground in a lifeless heap. It is as abrupt as it is final. And her eyes, dishonest and untrue though they are, they too now stare right through him, accusing.  
  
He howls and rears up and tries again, and again, each slamming thud of his body against the barrier reverberating through him, rattling his teeth, blinding him, shaking the fight from his exhausted bones.  
  
“You cannot save her, any more than you could save them. You will fail in this as you have always failed.”  
  
His blood runs hot in his veins and that old familiar hate, that bubbling well of pitch and bile in the seat of him ignites in oppressive blue flame. It blisters and it hungers, and as it courses through him it devours all that is good, all that is just, and all he wants in that moment is for the entire world to smoulder and take every shred of magic with it.  
  
But locked there in his cage, all there is for him to do is to seethe and roar.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Cullen awoke with violence, knees banging the underside of the desk as he thrashed out of sleep, and he clung to the arms of his chair with a white-knuckle grip that seemed the only thing holding him down in a world that was suddenly spinning as if trying to throw him off. His brain throbbed inside his skull with each thunderous beat of his heart, so loud in his ears and so fast, he was sure that he was dying.  
  
A surge of bile rose in his throat, burning as it came until he could taste it on the back of his tongue, and he clenched shut his eyes and stilled himself against the sickness. Mouth watering dangerously, the slightest movement would be disastrous. He allowed himself just the barest of motions, just enough to choke it back down. There he sat for Maker knows how long, wood groaning under his grip, the wind hissing and howling through the cracks in the stone tower, a reminder to breathe, just breathe. Cool, crisp air, clean. Fresh. Free.  
  
 _Though the darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm. I shall endure._  
  
“I shall endure…I shall endure…”  
  
When the nausea abated, when the drumming in his chest died down, he released his vise over the chair and leaned forward on the desk, rubbing at his eyes wearily. The last report he had been working on still lay before him, and a stack of five new ones had appeared at his elbow. How long had he slept, he wondered? The stiffness and the aches in his back, in his legs, in his head; it felt like hours since he had moved. But the candle had burned down barely at all. Minutes, then.  
  
That was all it took. Just minutes. For the shake in his hands to become too great for him to even grasp a quill. For his mouth to turn to desert and his lungs fill with sand, slowly suffocating him, one painful, shallow breath at a time. For his mind to take him to the deepest of darkest places, where the anger reigned and he did not even recognise his own voice, his own face, his own hands.  
  
His gaze drifted to the drawer at his right. Was it worth all this? One trembling hand reached out, took the handle. No, he thought. And pulled. No, he thought. And his hand reached in, fingers wrapping around the familiar shape. _No_. And his arm withdrew, timorous as it lifted the box out and placed it on the desk. A comfortable heft to it, something once lost but now returned. A missing piece of an impossible puzzle, sitting plainly before him, begging to be restored. Thumb fingering the clasp. Perhaps just a little…  
  
The tiny blue bottle glimmered in its seat, shining, welcoming. He could already taste it on his tongue, sharp at first, growing sweeter as it lingered, as the song grew louder, more divine than any Chant he had ever heard. Sparks in the shadow, a flickering flame, a blaring fire. Warmth and light. Strength and control. Completion. A feeling of wholeness, sorely lacking. An end to the aches, to the chills, to the shakes, to the hunger. Just to be able to rest again, to sleep without dreaming. Without remembering. To be able to look her in the eyes without the stinging shame. Just a taste was all he needed.  
  
As his fingers fumbled over the philter, he was ignorant to all else around him, the world muted against the low hum of expectation, anticipation, emancipation. He did not hear his office door swing open, or the clamorous entrance of the former Grand Enchanter, followed closely by Knight-Lieutenant Braeden with whom she furiously traded barbs, plus a handful of hangers-on on either side of the fight.  
  
“Commander, I apologise for the intrusion, I tried to stop—”  
  
“Tried to silence me, you mean. I make no such apology. This is an outrage, Commander, and I…Commander? I demand action be taken! Commander, are you even listening?”  
  
All at once, the world around him fell into perfect focus; like a glass shattering to the floor, the shrillness of the Enchanter’s voice punched through the veil. With a huff, Cullen snapped the lid suddenly down on the lyrium case and pushed it aside, burying it under parchment, out of sight, out of reach. “What?” he growled, a pulse of anger rippling through him at the interruption.  
  
Fiona observed him through narrowed eyes. Suspicion from mages was nothing he was not accustomed to, but hers was piercing. “Your templars have taken two of my mages into custody and refuse to allow me access.”  
  
“Right. As is the procedure in dealing with _criminals_ , Enchanter.”  
  
The mage scoffed. “Are we all criminals, Knight-Lieutenant? Is that why my people have not been afforded even the most basic of rights?”  
  
“Basic rights? You have more rights than you clearly know how to manage!”  
  
The Commander pushed away from the desk, but held onto it inconspicuously as he stood on legs that still felt weak beneath his weight, and then with a sigh turned to the window. It was going to be one of those days, it seemed. Leaning against the wall, he stared blankly out into the icy beyond as Braeden launched into a tirade of his own. The mages in question had been picked up for desertion, he said. They refused to yield to authorities and attacked, a charge that Fiona vehemently denied, but Braeden just grew louder. One soldier was killed and another blinded before a templar managed to suppress them long enough to be bound and dragged back to Skyhold, where yes, they had been imprisoned in the cells, under constant templar guard. The reports had all been filed as per procedure. Probably one of the stack Cullen had not yet reached. If only he had not slept…  
  
If only… He shook his head. No.  
  
“ _Crimes_ , Enchanter. In most armies just desertion can get you drawn and quartered, but they didn’t just desert, those bastards killed a man. You expect us to what, just let them go with a pat on the bum? There, there. Poor magey. Clearly the smouldering corpse is just a big misunderstanding! We’ll let his family know you were having a bad day. Let’s all forget our troubles with a spot of cake, shall we?”  
  
“And this blatant lack of respect is supposed to set me at ease? I am just to believe the word of one templar with an obvious prejudice against us?”  
  
“Oh, and you’re the picture of impartiality, aren’t you? There are witnesses!” Braeden exclaimed. “Ask the poor bugger in the infirmary with his eyes burned out of his skull what happened if you won’t believe me.”  
  
“There is any number of reasons for what might have occurred. No doubt they were provoked, or felt threatened by something your men did,” she replied with insolence. “Additionally, both of the mages in question are young and were barely Harrowed when all this started. I would request leniency in light of—”  
  
“When all this started? _You_ started this!”  
  
A storm of voices erupted then, with all of the followers jumping into the fray to defend the actions of both sides. Ten or more different voices all shouting the same recycled rhetoric, arguments made a hundred times over in the face of a hundred different problems. As if the solutions were simple and it was sheer malice that kept things from resolution. It was all the worse now, with a hole in the sky, the Chantry in tatters, the Order corrupted, and a fledgling Inquisition trying to bring change with limited authority. Cullen knew there was unrest in the ranks, but had been hopeful—or perhaps naïve—enough to think the mages might see beyond themselves, or the templars beyond their doctrine. Now it was a three-way fight instead of just two. Us versus them versus us.  
  
It all became a droning din, a buzzing in his ears, and he recalled his conversation with Olivia before she left. Children could hardly be blamed for playing at mages and templars if the mages and templars all about them were seen to be behaving like children. And Cullen was tired of playing arbiter. Was this not precisely the life he was trying _so hard_ to leave behind?  
  
“Enough!” the Commander snarled, drowning out the dissent. “You are all members of the Inquisition now. You are all held to the same standard as any other soldier on the field, regardless of your specific circumstance.” He returned to lean on his desk so that he could level his gaze at the group of malcontents before him. “There will be an investigation, as is procedure. If there is any evidence of wrong-doing, it will be handled accordingly. Otherwise, the prisoners will be held, under guard of at least one templar at all times, to be judged by the Inquisitor upon her return. I will not hear argument to the contrary. Is that clear?”  
  
“Aye, Commander,” Braeden answered immediately, bowing with a fist over his heart.  
  
“Good. Then back to your duties, all of you. I’ll not entertain any more petulant bickering in my office today.”  
  
Cullen returned his attention down to the reports as a dozen pairs of feet began a slow shuffle out of the room. Finding Braden’s among the pile, he shifted it to the top of the stack. The sooner this went away, the better.  
  
“And what of my request to see them?” Fiona asked, standing defiant.  
  
He sighed heavily. Merely standing seemed too great an effort presently; he was in no mood for this garbage, and had no time for the Grand Enchanter on a good day, if he was honest. “Denied. You are a conscript of the Inquisition. You have no authority over anything. And I will not stand idle and allow you to sow discord among the ranks. If you wish to help the mages here, then I suggest you lead by example, because Maker help me, if you won’t, then I will handle things myself. I believe we even have a vacant tower that will serve nicely as an interim Circle, and more than enough knights to guard it. Or perhaps you’d like to take your chances on another deal with Tevinter?”  
  
The Grand Enchanter narrowed her eyes once more, seething. “How quickly you slip into old ways, Commander. The Inquisitor will hear of this.”  
  
Cullen barked out an impatient laugh. “Of course she will. I’ve nothing to hide from the Inquisitor.”  
  
“Are you quite sure?” she replied coolly, her indignant stare flicking across his desk to the stack of papers, and the wooden box buried underneath. With that, she turned on her heel and stalked out, slamming the door behind her.  
  
His very armor suddenly seemed like far too heavy a burden to hold up, and he collapsed back into his chair, unable to train his eyes away from the lyrium case just outside his reach. As if on its own, his hand reached out for it, but he regained control and snatched it back, scratching the back of his neck, tugging at his hair nervously. Anything to keep it busy.  
  
 _How quickly you slip into old ways…_  
  
With a growl he opened his desk drawer and swept into it the pile of clutter, papers and all, slamming it shut behind. He could not stay here. Grabbing up the stack of reports, he headed for the door with no real destination in mind. The tavern, perhaps. A stiff drink might take the edge off. Or make things worse. Perhaps the armory, then. The clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer always had a soothing effect. Reminded him of his father, a good man. A better man.  
  
Besides, it seemed he was overdue for a conversation with the Seeker.


	3. Dissenting

It had been a long three weeks, and Olivia could barely believe how eager she was to return to Skyhold. A proper meal was in order; some of cook’s hearty stew would be delightful, though anything freshly prepared would be a welcome change from the chewy salted meat and stale bread she had been eating for days now. Her jaw could not take much more of the stuff. Also, a hot bath and a stiff sponge to scrub the disgusting film of mire mud from her skin, grime she could still feel in her pores despite a half dozen frosty river baths between there and here. Her nose twitched at the thought of all the rot and decay she must have waded through. Maker, what of the stink? Had she actually managed to scrub it off? What if it lingered and she had she just grown used to it? Maybe she should burn these leathers, just to be sure. Oh, how she longed for the feel of fresh linens, and clean socks for her wrinkled, waterlogged toes. Even the cold would be welcome as long as she was dry. But perhaps the greatest luxury that awaited her was the simple joy of her bed. If she was going to not sleep anywhere, it was infinitely preferable in a soft bed with feathers in her pillow instead of rocks in her back.

So focused was she on these and other great extravagances that it never occurred to her what else might be waiting for her. It was far easier to forget her title out on the road, where the only baggage she carried was a small pack of supplies. As soon as she reached the outskirts of the basin encampment, her mood began to shift. The city of tents was a full third larger again than when she had left. Pilgrims stopped to observe her as she passed by, mothers with their children waving, others falling into deep bows and curtsies. Soldiers on the road stood at attention and saluted, offering earnest ‘Your worships’. _Worship_. A heavy word. Merchants, on the other hand, saw her merely as an opportunity and chased after her horse with arms full of goods, peddling all manner of finery and knickknacks, exotic fruits and textiles. One even tried to sell her a beastly looking dog. _Fereldens_. Before she was even halfway up the mountain, she was exhausted of both greetings and apologies.  
  
“This shit never stops being weird,” Varric muttered, shifting uncomfortably in his saddle. “Is this an army or a cult?”  
  
“No more strange than the sight of you on a horse, dwarf,” Blackwall guffawed. “We should ask Dennet about a pony for you.”  
  
“Warden, you’ll have to do better than that if you want to hurt my feelings. Maybe include a dig about my mother.”  
  
“A lovely woman, by all accounts,” Dorian said cheerfully. “Her beard is the envy of all Tevinter.”  
  
“See, now that’s more like it.”  
  
Olivia chuckled quietly, content merely to eavesdrop as the three continued to trade barbs, as had become the way of things through the course of three weeks on the road together. It was an easy group, things never getting too difficult or serious, and any problems they did have they’d soon work out over a mug of ale. Blackwall in particular reminded her in many ways of her eldest brother: tractable, deferential, and just a little too grim, but ultimately a good man. A man of the people. Their beards even matched.  
  
The mirthful mudslinging was drowned out by the sudden eruption of horns blaring through the valley as they came upon the outer gate. “The Inquisitor approaches!” the lookouts yelled, one after another, an echoing signal along the bridge all the way to the Hold proper.  
  
“Quite a welcome. It seems _someone_ is excited to see us,” the mage at her back quipped.  
  
“Yes, someone,” Olivia muttered, distracted by the unusual host of templar trappings she spied along the bridge, and her earlier anticipation dwindled into something more closely resembling dismay. Such showings of force had been common among the loyal houses of Ostwick after the rebellion, her father’s included. What better way to declare one’s allegiance than a rigorous display of righteous steel? It had the added benefit of dissuading any wandering apostates from seeking asylum on one’s lands. What it could mean here, though, was more concerning.  
  
With a slight sigh, she guided the horse to a trot for the final approach, and it seemed her consternation was justified when she was met by the scowling face of the Commander at the gate. He looked better than the last time she had seen him, though his mood had clearly not lifted. Even so, a quiver struck her chest at the sight of him, as if it was full of moths, gambolling about an open flame.  
  
“Inquisitor,” he said by way of a greeting.  
  
Even before she had drawn to a complete stop, one of Dennet’s stable hands was upon her, reaching for the reigns of her charger. Cullen gave the beast a gentle rub on the neck as she dismounted, a tepid smile breaking through his grim veneer. Olivia, on the other hand, grimaced to find that having firm ground beneath her feet was not the comfort she has hoped, her stiff legs and back crying out as if she had landed on knives.  
  
“Commander.” She nodded over her shoulder. “This fanfare—”  
  
“The ambassador’s doing,” he muttered, his distaste evident. The Commander was a man of austerity, a trait she found appealing, among others. “For all the pomp, I wish it was a _warmer_ welcome,” he added, turning to her as the hand led her horse across the yard, following after her companions who attended their own.  
  
She tore the gloves from her aching hands, fingers flexing in the cool air of freedom, and they cracked audibly, though not unpleasantly. “You mentioned some trouble,” she replied with a nod, vaguely recalling the terse message from almost a fortnight ago, though at the she had time been too concerned with all the living corpses and giant angry barbarians in the south to pay it too much mind. What concern was it of hers, she’d thought? Someone else would handle things. It was proving difficult to reconcile the idea that people reported to her and not the other way around. “I take it things are not improved.”  
  
“To say the least,” Cullen replied sourly. “I’ve done what I can to keep the peace, but the history of mistrust on both sides is not easily overcome. Word of your return reached us this morning, and the mages have closed ranks and gathered in anticipation of the trial. That’s making the templars nervous.”  
  
“And that’s making you nervous,” Olivia observed, and he shrugged an admission. “I suppose it would be too much to ask for the world to stop falling to pieces long enough for me to bathe?”  
  
“Um,” Cullen scratched at the back of his neck, suddenly looking anywhere but at her. Olivia glanced down at her horse-weary state, scrutinising self-consciously her mud-caked boots and leathers stained with Maker-knew-what. Could it be even worse than she thought? Lovely. “I fear what may happen if this isn’t dealt with immediately, Inquisitor.” His visage fell then, along with his tone. "The injured officer succumbed yesterday. The wound is raw."  
  
Another sigh escaped her. “Very well, then. Let’s have it done.”  
  
The Commander appraised her of the situation more thoroughly on the walk to the Great Hall, barely able to mask his contempt for the Grand Enchanter’s role in the mutiny as he related the initial event, the confrontation, the investigation, and the fallout. That part went without saying, as every pair of mage eyes they passed were either cast upon them with cold contempt or averted to the ground in shame. Templars loitered about the edges, some with arms folded across their chests, others with hands poised on their swords. Everywhere she looked, she saw division and scorn, and a host of bystanders with no stake in anything just enduring against the tide. A house falling to ruin faster than its walls could even be built. Cullen was right; soon she would hold dominion over ashes.  
  
Inside the Hall, the tension grew thick and suffocating. True to Cullen’s report, it seemed the majority of the mages were gathered already, with the stragglers trailing behind her, and the hum of voices fell into silence as she entered and all turned toward her expectantly. Cullen paused at one of the guards and sent a quiet order that might as well have been a shout to retrieve the prisoners from below, and that set the whole room off again. Directly ahead sat the—her—throne; a formidable silhouette of wood and leather and iron, it commanded attention. A corona of swords for her weary head. The seat was hard and uncomfortable, every moment in it like being bound to some ancient Tevinter torture device.  
  
Olivia slung her bow and quiver from her back and handed it, along with her gloves, to a servant waiting at the foot of the steps, and then ascended with great labour, the weight of the room pressing down upon her. Hundreds of pairs of incited eyes boring into her, she forced her chin up and ignored the wriggling feeling of her guts trying to escape out of her mouth. Behind it all, a soaring wall of coloured glass radiated in the afternoon sun, the all-seeing eye of the Chantry burning brightly at its peak, and the gaze she felt most acutely was that of holy Andraste, ever judging.  
  
A deep breath to steel herself and she sat down upon that hard seat and waited, feeling suddenly much more naked than merely from the wrist. Grand Enchanter Fiona stood at the head of the congregation of mages, fine elven features rutted with her discontent. On the opposite side was Vivienne, whose cool mask was as aloof and impassive as always, and Olivia became even more keenly aware of her dishevelment and fought the urge to fidget or groom. Better to be thought a mess than be seen to acknowledge it herself, she decided. It seemed in that moment there was nigh a friendly face among sea of them, bar Cullen, who stood at attention at her left hand. Ever the templar, he stared over their heads, chin up, back straight, unfazed by the clear disfavour of the room. Knight-Commander. Protector. Stalwart. Olivia had never been so glad for his presence, though that was not something the Inquisitor could readily confess.  
  
The crowd parted down the centre as the prisoners were escorted in, and Olivia’s pounding heart plummeted. Neither one looked old enough to even enlist in a regular army. Both appeared scrawny and bedraggled, sheets of ashen skin draped over bone, their cheeks hollow and eyes sunken into dark wells. Seemingly too weak to even stand, the young girl dropped to her knees at the foot of the stairs, her matted and dirty hair falling down over her face. The boy though stood, albeit shakily, his cavernous eyes echoing anger. So much rage; so much blame. It sent a shiver down her spine.  
  
“Have they not been fed?” Olivia whispered with alarm to Cullen.  
  
“They refused,” he replied summarily, then stepped forward to address the room. “Inquisitor; Bastien Renaud and Rosamond Dupont, mages both formerly of the Montsimmard Circle of Magi, conscripted into the Inquisition after the liberation of Redcliffe. Both stand before you accused of attempted desertion, and the consequent deaths of two Inquisition officers.”  
  
“Murderers!” came a shout from the crowd.  
  
“Self-defence!” came a reply.  
  
“You will maintain order or be removed,” the Commander barked, barely nodding a signal to his officers, who snapped to attention and saluted in understanding. “Inquisitor,” he said, softer, turning the proceedings over to her.  
  
Olivia shifted in her seat. Beads of sweat rolled down her neck in the heat of the burning sun behind her. Leather did not breathe. “What have the prisoners to say for themselves?”  
  
Bastien arched his back, standing tall against the shackles that bound his wrists and feet, and with a sneer, spat on the floor at the foot of the steps. A whisper of turmoil rippled through the room, applause against outrage, and the templars who accompanied the pair moved to intervene. Without taking her eyes from the mage, the Inquisitor snapped a hand up, and the entire room fell immediately still at her gesture.  
  
“Do what you will, Inquisitor,” the boy croaked, his impertinence having left his mouth barren. It did not take long for him to find a voice in his depths, slow and measured, each word a work of determined fury. “I’ve no fear of you or what you call justice. I’ve spent my life locked away already. What have I to fear? My only crime is to want freedom. From them,” he nodded at Cullen, “and your precious Chantry. Herald of Andraste? See what I think of your Andraste.” Bastien pointed at the sputum on the floor. “You believe me a monster, then I will become one! I’m glad those bastards are dead. I will never regret what I am, or what I did—only that I did not kill more of them! My conscience is clear, Inquisitor. I wonder if you can say the same.” It was a practiced speech. She supposed he had had nothing but time.  
  
The Inquisitor’s jaw clenched tight and a rush of blood hit her cheeks, but she otherwise remained stoic in the face of the remarks. Her mind went to her father, and his matter-of-fact disposition. A proud man but not arrogant, a wise man but not a diplomat, he took censure and acclaim equally in stride and never let either affect his posture. Passion belonged in private, he would say. But while she reflected and showed nothing of her affront, the room erupted around the young mage, and it seemed for a moment that the only thing that would sate it was blood. Even Cullen’s hand drifted to his hip, an unconscious action, one borne of years of dedication to a singular purpose.  
  
“Silence!” the Inquisitor shouted coolly, and waited as her command rippled to the ends of the room. When order reigned, she peered down at the crumpled form of the young woman, Rosamond, now heaving with the regularity of sobs. “And you, girl? Have you anything to say?”  
  
“N-no defense, your worship,” the girl whimpered, meekly from behind her curtain of straggly mane.  
  
“Quiet, Rose,” Bastien snapped at her. “Do not give her the sati—”  
  
“It’s over, love. Let it be,” Rosamond said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She fell into a reverie of regret and wracking sobs, the skinny arms that held her up giving out under her meager weight, and as she fell to her elbows her hands came together in prayer. “Forgive me.”  
  
Olivia shot a quick glance to the Commander, who nodded to her, be it in encouragement or impatience, she could not say. In either case, her course was clear. “Leaving aside the attempted desertion that led to the events in question, you have each stood before this office and admitted to your guilt in the murders of two officers of this Inquisition. A capital offence; there is only one response." Olivia swallowed hard, the swelling lump of dread in her throat making it difficult. “Bastien Renaud. Rosamond Dupont. You have left me no choice but to sentence you both to death.”  
  
Cheers erupted, punctuated by crying and jeers from the detractors. Vivienne nodded her approval; Fiona’s scowl deepened. Rosamond lifted her head and for the first time Olivia could see her face. White tear streaks amongst the filth, full lips dry and cracked; she would have been a pretty young thing under normal circumstances. Her bright blue eyes were timid but gentle, and a wan smile crossed her face. Her mouth made the shape of a “Thank you,” though her lamb’s voice was lost in the thunder of the crowd.  
  
As the guards hauled the prisoners out, the Inquisitor found herself rising to her feet upon her dais. “As for the rest of you,” she shouted over the din. Every soul halted and turned toward Olivia, and a quiet panic set in within her. What was she doing? Hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, her palms were sweaty, fingers still aching from the long ride and from gripping the arms of her seat of judgement. Her back screamed for rest. “You are not here by invitation. You were conscripted because the world demanded your service, and you are not unique in this. We are at war. Look about you. Every soldier in this army is here and serves because this war demands their sacrifice.” It tumbled out of her, someone else’s words sounded out in a voice she barely recognised over the pounding of her heart in her ears, forceful and confident. Authoritative. The Inquisitor.  
  
“But I offer you now a choice. Stay, and be held to the exact standard as every other conscript of this army, with the same protections, the same opportunities and the same restraints. Stay knowing that the price the Inquisition asks of you may be your very life. Stay knowing that you will be a part of something greater than any one person, any one faction, even any single country. Or leave. Leave knowing that you have been denounced by the nation of Ferelden and will be driven by force from her lands. Leave knowing that you will be hunted by templars who hold no fealty to any order but their own whims. And leave, knowing that if you cross the Inquisition again, that neither will it stay its hand against you. The choice is yours. You have three days to decide, after which I will not tolerate any further insurrection. Your rebellion ends here.”  
  
“And when this is over, Inquisitor?” the former Grand Enchanter retorted, arms folded across her chest. “If we stay, and we help you win this war, what becomes of us then?”  
  
Olivia could feel Cullen’s templar gaze, a warning. “That is a matter for the eventual Divine. All I offer is an opportunity to prove that you are worthy of her consideration. If that is insufficient, then take your chances with apostacy,” she said curtly. Before the enchanter could answer, the Inquisitor turned to her Commander. “Clear the hall and make the necessary preparations. Send word for me when things are ready.”  
  
“Of course, Inquisitor.”  
  
She nodded and descended from the throne, stalking with purpose to her chamber door. The darkness within enveloped her retreat, and she shouldered her whole weight against it to push it closed. A cold draft whispered somewhere in the upper reaches, the only sound that penetrated her private sanctum. She put her back against the door and slid to the floor, body tensing and bracing against it as if waiting for some expected assault, but it never came. Instead it was just her, just Olivia, hiding in the dark, in the quiet, from what the Inquisitor had executed on the other side. And what she had yet to.  
  
And Olivia sobbed.


	4. Willing

The hand of midwinter gripped the land tightly and seemed it would never relent, even as the season drew to an imminent close. The sun was still a stranger, ornamental; a ghost cloaked in a shroud of bleak grey, whose vain haunt grew only slightly longer with each new dawn. Branches wilted under their burdens of snow, and more continued to fall all afternoon, massive flakes that floated lackadaisically from the sky upon the still air. They stuck in her eyelashes and in her hair, and when she opened her mouth to catch them, they landed cool upon her tongue and tickled as they dissolved into nothing. A huff of steam erupted from her mouth as she giggled, then opened her mouth to capture some more.

“Keep up, Livvy.”

“I am,” she replied defiantly, despite having come to a standstill among the pines, face to the sky, catching snowflakes.

“Olivia.”

Ser Leith chuckled. One of her father’s vassals and nearest friends, he often accompanied them on their winter hunts. “Aye, come on, girl! We’ve an impressive quarry to show off,” he said, proudly slapping the hart carcass tied across his horse. “We’ll be the toast of Wintersend when we present this beast.”

With a sigh, Olivia relented and set off again, trudging through the tracks her father and Ser Leith had made in the snow, so deep in parts that it covered her knees. It made for slow going, the trails they had taken on the way in just a few days ago now swallowed up, but she welcomed the stall. Once they were out of the forest, it would be a clear shot, less than a day’s ride to home. Wintersend preparations would be almost complete, the festival proper just two days hence. Ordinarily she relished this time of year. The food and the revelry; the whole city came alive in celebration. Theatre spilled out into the streets, jugglers and acrobats and poets and minstrels with stories both old and new to relate. Traders from all the corners of the world converged on the markets, bringing all manner of bizarre items and delicacies never before seen. The streets sung with joy. This year it would seem more a dirge.

Ser Leith stopped until she was caught up, then slung a massive arm around her tiny waist and picked her up, pinning her against his hip as he might carry a bundle of furs or a keg of ale, effortless. She kicked and squirmed for her freedom, to no avail. “Maker’s breath, girl, you’re getting heavy. You want to be careful; keep growing up like you are, and my sons will be after you for a wife,” he teased.

“She goes to the Chantry after the festival,” the Bann said plainly, silencing not just debate but also the mirth of Leith’s jest.

“Ah. A shame. My boys could use an arse kicking from a fine girl such as this one.” Leith swung her around and set her back down, a cascade of snowflakes flung from her hair as he mussed it with his titanic hand. “Not with her brothers?” he asked, the merriment thoroughly fled.

The Bann shook his head. “They inquired, and I refused. She’ll choose her path, but I’ll not have her walk that one.”

“Why must I go at all? It’s not fair,” she said, frustration tricking her into a verbal confession that she knew would not be met with cheer.

“Not again, Livvy,” her father answered. It was an argument she had already started and lost, and he did not entertain repetition. “You are a Trevelyan. Trevelyans serve the Maker.”

Olivia slunk back into formation behind Ser Leith, continued the trek in silence, feeling every bit the prisoner being led towards oblivion, bound by a rope of her own name. She kicked huffily at the snow as she went, as the Bann and Ser Leith continued to speak about her as if she was not there, a tiny heart withering in despair. There would be no more hunts until Harvestmere, at least. Maybe not even then, depending on the clerics’ humours. The pleasantly long days of summer normally spent haunting the docks as the fishing boats came and went, or in the fields tending crops of corn and berries, would now seem a painful chore as she eked them out entombed in some stifling chantry chamber, dusting old tomes. That was the veneration the Maker demanded? It seemed to Olivia that he would have better things to worry about than where she said her chants.

The woods soon began to open up as they neared its edge, the terrain sloping down into the winter plain across which she could just make out the shadow of Ostwick looming on the southeastern horizon. They took particular care as they crossed the frozen stream at the forest border. It was treacherous enough to cross under normal conditions, with its rocky bed of stones polished to glass by the ice melt running off the mountains at their back. It sat now as a clear sheet of ice, the snow providing the only traction. Olivia almost slipped a few times as she followed, and broke formation so that she might gain more footing by forging her own path.

It was then that she heard it, a quiet, whimpering bleat, not unlike the call of the lambs in the home yard. Olivia stopped, stilling even her own breathing as she waited, listening over the sound of the horses and the crunching of the snow, the creaking of the sheet ice as they went on ahead. She squinted, straining to hear or to distinguish any shapes in the whiteout landscape, and began to think she had imagined it when she heard it again, somewhere in the brush at the stream’s bank. Her father called out again for her to catch up, but she ignored him, instead treading carefully after of the sound.

Olivia was almost upon the beast before she spotted it, the outline of a small, lean red deer lying on its side amongst the weeds and gnarled tree roots. Camouflaged by a mantle of snow, it was clear the animal had been there for some time. One glassy black eye watched intently as she approached, nostrils huffing in alarm.

She froze. “Papa,” she called quietly, voice not enough to cover the distance that had opened up between, and so she called again, as loud as she dare without frightening the creature any further. It was enough, and she pointed at the ground before her when he asked what the matter was. Olivia heard him sigh, but he turned the horse about and made is way toward her position, Leith in tow.

“What is it, Livvy?” he asked, following the line of her pointing finger. He grunted an acknowledgement.

“Huh. Looks like a doe, but she’s antlers,” Ser Leith noted with surprise as he drew up alongside.

“They mate with the western breeds, time to time. Rare, but not unheard of,” the Bann said with a nod. “Young thing, though. Second season at most. Barely old enough to be on her own.”

“I think she’s hurt, Papa,” Olivia said, stepping again toward the beast, only a few feet away now.

“Stay back, Livvy. She may spook.”

Olivia ignored him, cooing softly as she took another step, then another. The animal’s chest heaved rapidly in short, shallow breaths, and its front hoof twitched as Olivia neared, so she took her time, inching ever toward it until she was sure the deer was at ease with her presence. It was clear now, the patch of dark red snow under the doe’s back leg, which was twisted at a frightening and unnatural angle. “Shh, it’s okay. Are you hurt, little one?” To her father, she said, “We have to help her.”

“Olivia, no,” he said firmly, shaking his head. “She’s for the wolves.”

“We can’t just leave her!”

“Nature can be cruel as well as kind, Olivia. It is the way of things. It’s the Maker’s will.”

“But I found her. What if the Maker’s will was that I help?” she retorted, kneeling now behind the animal. Still it watched her, trembling, whether with fright or pain or cold Olivia could not know, but it seemed evident that all of the fight had gone from it. When Olivia reached out a hand a placed it gingerly on the animal’s side, it made no attempt to flee, nor even flinched. The deer’s erratic breathing began to slow as she stroked at its neck.

“She has you there, old friend,” Ser Leith said with a chuckle.

The Bann sighed, scratching at his beard. “It does not change that we’ve no means of helping. But, I suppose, we can end her suffering.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Make your choice, Livvy.”

As she ran her hand over a patch of coarse fur at the beast’s shoulder, she was entranced. For all the time she had spent in this forest, hunting deer just like this one with her father, she felt suddenly as if she had never actually seen one at all. As game, they were an abstract concept. They were hoof prints in the mud, rub marks on the tree, a half-eaten bush. They were shadows, flickers in the corner of the eye, the sound of breaking twigs. When she did finally lay her often tired eyes upon them, it was always from a distance, down the shaft of an arrow, through a lens of intense concentration. An echo among a hundred echoes in the chamber of her mind. Or else it was once they were splayed out on the ground, already dead, as her father went about and showed her how to field dress the carcass. Never like this, never so close. Never in-between.

“Like the goats?” she asked.

“Aye.”

“And she won’t hurt?”

“Less than she does now,” her father replied. “It will be quick. But you must make the cut; Leith and I will have to hold her.”

Olivia merely nodded in compliance. The Bann signalled to Ser Leith, who tied the horses to a nearby tree and then both joined her at the distressed animal. Her father drew his large knife from the sheath at his belt and held it out to her. Olivia stared at the carved wooden handle, weathered and stained, the old engravings long since worn down to a polished surface from years of use. It felt heavy in her hand, and so huge, her young fingers only just able to close around the grip.

“Quick and clean,” he said gravely. The Bann dropped to one knee beside her, and with an arm outstretched to push his daughter out of the way he swung his other leg over the deer’s body so that he was straddling the beast and used his whole body weight to hold it down. The animal jerked its head and huffed, big black eye darting in a quiet panic, but quickly settled, too weak to fight, and resigned apparently to its fate.

Leith came about to the right side of her and kneeled. With a remarkable tenderness that seemed impossible from a man of such bulk, he put his hands about the doe’s head and pulled it back to expose the neck, clicking his tongue and shushing the animal as he would a child he aimed to lull to sleep.

“There you are, Olivia. One swift cut. Just as the goats.”

It was nothing she hadn’t done or seen done a dozen times before. The doe’s attention remained fixed on Olivia, seemingly oblivious to all else, to the hands around its head or the weight of the Bann on its back, pinning it down. Olivia was similarly transfixed. In her ear, she heard her father’s voice urging her on, and she nodded, poising the knife at the spot, just under the jaw, just as the goats. She gulped, gripping her little fingers around the knife, knowing what to do, what must be done. Knowing it would be quick, that it would be over, no more suffering.

She took a deep breath and pressed the blade down. The doe bleated out a mournful sound, a sound that chilled Olivia’s blood and stopped her cold, and she dropped the knife in fright halfway through the cut. A wailing cry rung out, long and loud and bellowing with melancholy, underpinned now by a horrific, wet gurgling sound, and with a sudden burst of adrenal might, the deer thrashed and bucked with its entire body, breaking free of Ser Leith’s hold and knocking her father backward.

Bright white pin points of light exploded across Olivia's vision as she too was thrown backward, as one of those rare, velvety antlers collided with might into her face, bone against bone. A violent burst of pain erupted in her jaw and rippled outward with ever more momentum until it consumed her in throbbing waves. Somewhere under the pain, under the blindness, under the clanging in her ears, she heard her father yelling her name, but it was so distant he might as well have been a mile away. Cold surrounded her, wetness soaked into her tunic, into the furs about her shoulders that were supposed to keep her warm, but did no such thing. Instead she found herself shivering, her whole body trembling with a sudden chill, her guts churning inside of her with terrible fear.

“Papa,” she tried to say, but all that came was misery and blood, the right side of her face gored open, her mouth become useless. An awful rusty taste slithered down her throat, sticky and warm, so thick she began to choke, to cough and splutter.

Hands grabbed at her, pulled at her, pressed down upon her face. Voices yelled back and forth, but she could not make them out, all just noise within the noise, the only sound she could clearly hear was that awful bleating wail. Her head lolled to the side, neck suddenly far too weak to hold up the weight of her agony, and there not far from where she lay was the doe, collapsed to the ground on its broken leg, still staring at her with its huge black eye as the life now slowly ebbed out of its partially cut throat. Olivia held the animal’s gaze until her breaths drew shallow, until the darkness closed in, until the world began to fade from view and even the pain began to subside as everything dissolved into the void.

Such was the Maker’s will.


	5. Confessing

It had all seemed an elaborate work of fiction. The day in the courtyard, hefting the Inquisitor’s blade above her head to the cheers of the assembly like some scene stripped from Varric’s imagination, all embellishment for effect. Leadership had fallen to her by default because of the mark on her hand, that was all, and that was a heavy enough load. But that sword was anything but ornamental. One edge, judgement; the other, execution. It was sharp. It could cut. Through flesh, through bone, through sinew. Through life. Through resistance. All with terrifying ease, no respite for hesitation. Once done, never undone.  
  
Prayer used to be a salvation, an escape, a soft comfort when all around were hard edges and jagged turns. It used to be a reflection that eased her savage soul, and lit the dark paths when fear closed in around her, when loneliness was her only companion. It used to be. Yet now as she stood among the candles of the chantry, it was not the light that found her, but the shadow. Not the hope, but the doubt. _Was I right?_ The open arms of Andraste seemed less a welcome and more a snare. _Was **he**?_ When she reached out for the Maker, she found neither solace in the Chant, nor any answers to her pleas, but only her own voice, a reply of echoing questions bouncing about an empty chamber. _Is this your will?_ The Maker was departed. Andraste was not listening. She was alone. _And who am I?_ The greatest relief to be found now in the chantry was leaving it, and she let the door thud shut behind her with finality as she stepped out into the garden.  
  
The moon was as high as the Hold was silent, only the barest murmur of footsteps on the battlements above as bored guards struggled to remain awake on their midnight patrols. Firelight spat and crackled, lighting the way back to the Great Hall, but she turned with purpose and went the other way, up the stairs and to the fortifications, and just began to walk, downcast. She was as far from sleep as she had ever been, her mind on fire, her heart clenched in ice, her skin tight and tender and raw from the scrubbing. Three baths later and she still could not get clean. The smell of ash and blood followed after her.  
  
She meted out an ambling pace, following wherever the path led her, conscientious to avoid eye contact with any of the guards she passed, fearful of what she might see reflected there. _Pale blue eyes that will never close, staring forever; piercing from beyond the Veil._ Eventually she met the door leading back into the hall and onto the balcony, where Vivienne slumbered upon her daybed in elegant repose; unfazed, untroubled, a picture of grace. _Gasps and cheers from the crowd; a captivating horror, they cannot look away._ Courtiers milled about below, before the looming throne of spikes from which she dispensed her law, drinking and feasting, preening and pandering, blissful in their witlessness. Olivia swallowed her resentment and hurried past on her toes to silence the creaking wood beneath her feet. _The head thuds as it hits the deck, rolls onto its side; mouth hangs crudely open in an eternal silent scream._ At the far door, she dithered; up or down? Up led to the mages’ library, and to the rookery, to the agents who never slept, who watched always, whose secrets spread like roots to nourish every leaf upon the Nightingale’s tree of machinations. Olivia went down, careful of her footing on the dimly lit stairs. _Deck grows greasy with blood, creeping under her boots, leaving dark stains._ Circling into the gallery, she realised her folly. Trapped. Spies above, sycophants beside, judgement all around. Out was the only way.  
  
Halfway across the bridge she came to an abrupt stop. All paths behind her led back to the Hall, but to go forward she would have to cut through the Commander’s office. He would no doubt be sleeping in his loft, while she prowled about in his office below. Did his office count as his quarters? And how would it appear, entering his chambers in the dead of night? The hawks in the rookery, ever-seeing, ever-watching, waiting to strike and tear the secrets from her flesh. Nervous chains constricted around her insides. The bridge seemed suddenly so high, the air so thin, too thin to breathe, too thin for her fledgling wings. The winter wind thrust against her, pushing her toward the edge, pushing her down, spiralling prey for the raptors. Far below her, the scaffold in the courtyard was a shadowy blight among the moonlight, the wind a murmur of mordant applause. Olivia jammed her eyes shut, breathless for all the blood and ash. Spinning, retching, and then running. Running for the door; she pushed blindly inside and threw it closed behind her, gasping.  
  
“Inquisitor…?”  
  
Wrong way. Olivia jumped, an unexpected yelp escaping as she whirled around. “I’m sorry,” she wheezed, looking down, up, anywhere else. Skin on fire. _Breathe_. “I was...” She trailed off, gesturing so vaguely at the east door even she was not sure what it was she was trying to communicate. “I didn’t mean to… I’ll just get out of your way.” She turned and grabbed for the door.  
  
“Wait—!”  
  
Voice like fingers down her back; a shiver, a flutter, her heart in her throat. _Breathe_. She waited.  
  
“You needn’t go.”  
  
Breathing was a two-way process; she exhaled. “Do you never sleep?”  
  
“Not if I can help it,” he replied with a thin jest. “Do you?”  
  
Pushing away from the door once more, she turned to face him. He was gone. The mantle and the steel. The Commander. Stripped of all his layers of armour, the man who stood behind the desk appeared just that, merely _a man_ , slim and wiry in his linen shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow like some labouring commoner; not the commander of one of the largest armies in southern Thedas. It was as disarming as he was disarmoured. Like seeing him for the first time, a second time. A familiar stranger. So much a like that man she had first spied across the field in Haven and felt intolerably drawn to. So much like the man who had pulled her from its ruin when death circled overhead. But so much more real. Too real for her quarrelling mind.  
  
She echoed his smile and made a cautious crossing of the room, breathing in a step, breathing out a step. The tremor inside her ribs began to subside, the twisting knots in her guts unravel, blood begin to cool as she neared him, and yet he seemed to grow uncomfortable as the distance closed, suddenly aware of his vulnerability and unsure of what to do with himself. Taking care to appear unflustered, even as host of untoward thoughts skirted the perimeters, she made her way past his desk to the bookshelf and inspected the shelves as diversion, an attempt to set them both at ease. Olivia smiled at its perfect predictability. Treatises on magic and studies on the demons and the Fade. Volumes on military strategy. Historical accounts of battles as far back as the Divine Age. Several of Genetivi’s manuscripts, including a well-worn copy of his account of the Fifth Blight. The full, unabridged text of the Chant of Light, bound in ornate leather, a burning sword embossed upon its spine. With a finger, she reached out and traced the outline of the flames, but pulled her hand back as surely as it had burned her.  
  
“I see her,” she said quietly. “When I try to sleep. Every time I close my eyes I see that girl’s face.” Olivia looked down, at the floor, at her boots. Blood. She looked away, to him. “I hear her voice. She thanked me, Cullen. _Thanked_ me for taking her life.”  
  
“I know.” He nodded, a brief and sympathetic smile crossing his scarred lips. “You know, it’s not necessary that you should perform the task yourself. I have any number of men who—”  
  
“I would not ask some other to do something I was unwilling to do myself. My word, my hand,” she said, shaking her head, and then added grimly, “Nor do I particularly want the Inquisition to be the kind of organisation that keeps an executioner in its employ.”  
  
Collapsing back into his chair, he folded his arms and reclined. “Fair enough. And… admirable.”  
  
“Hardly. But thank you.” Among the scattered piles of parchment and reports, she spied upon his desk a cup, a bottle beside it. Not even caring what it was, she grabbed it up and poured herself a generous drink. “It was different with Alexius. The things he did; the things he _would_ have done.” Olivia shuddered against the memory of those bleak inevitabilities she had undone, and raised the cup to her lips with hands still trembling. It smelled of spice and fire, tasted of the same, but after the second mouthful, she could stop wincing. She sat at the edge of his desk and judiciously nursed the rest until the feeling returned to her tongue. “I mean, Maker’s breath, he was in league with Corypheus. He was objectively guilty. Right? No room for doubt.”  
  
“And the guilt of those mages is also unquestionable.”  
  
“Is it?” she asked. “Yes; they killed those men. But if I had not forced them here against their wills, then your men would still live. They only wanted the freedom that I stole from them. I sat upon that throne and I declared them to death for a crime that I committed.”  
  
“You are not responsible for their actions, Inquisitor. They cast their own lot. Remember that Alexius claimed to do all he did for his son. Good intentions do not equal noble deeds,” Cullen countered, and she could but nod a concession. “Besides, there was no nobility in this, only selfish greed. I have seen countless mages like Renaud. The rebellion was an opportune pretense and it would not have ended there. He was a danger.”  
  
“But the girl was barely more than a child.”  
  
“Who turned her magic against a man and burned the eyes from his head. She was no innocent, whatever her meek appearances and convenient last minute attack of conscience might suggest. Those men deserved justice. You gave it to them. Take heart in that.”  
  
His words were unyielding, unforgiving and unassailable, spoken from experiences she could not equal nor even guess at. Everything Olivia knew of mages and of magic came from academia, from Chantry doctrine. Magic exists to serve man, never to rule over him. Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift and turned it against His children. Renaud had made no effort to hide his contempt while in chains, what foul and corrupt terror might he have wrought without them? Perhaps Cullen was right. Even the meekest of creatures could leave lasting scars. And when he looked at her that way, so earnest and so knowing, his golden eyes honeyed in the candle light, it was difficult to deny him his truth. Still, her own guilt boiled in her heart.  
  
Olivia smiled. “Then why do I feel like I’ve done everything wrong?”  
  
Cullen snorted a laugh. “Only be concerned if that worry ever goes away. At least, that’s what I tell myself,” he said, and reached forward, taking the cup from her hands, his bare fingers like ice as they brushed against her own.  
  
“The further I get down this path, the better I wish that I could go back and do everything over, armed with what I know now. I’ve made many mistakes.” She was a mistake. “I should have heeded your advice in the beginning. All of this would have been avoided had we approached the Templars.”  
  
“It is difficult to defend the Order as a better choice anymore.” Olivia followed the line of his gaze to the piles of intelligence on his desk. Each one had a singular focus of righteous fire all shaded in red. As she scanned, names and places popping out of the pages, her mind drifted toward her brothers, until Cullen’s voice brought her back again. “But perhaps I would have been better equipped to manage them. I must apologise, Inquisitor. The situation should not have escalated as it did. I handled things poorly, and led you into an ambush. I was…” he threw back what remained and poured another drink, “…distracted. I will not to fail you like this again.”  
  
“What? Cullen; you do more for the Inquisition than I dare say anyone. You’re far too hard on yourself.”  
  
“No, it’s…” His sudden nerves were evident; leg bouncing, fingers twitching, and that evening on the battlements came back to her, before the Mire. He wouldn’t look at her. “There’s something you should know, and I should have told you sooner, but with all that’s happened, there just never seemed a good time.”  
  
Olivia frowned as she listened to his frank admission, each word, each syllable, each individual sound, trying to understand, trying to process something that seemed unfathomable. A good man trapped and betrayed by his own devotion. Pain; madness; death; these were the words that lingered in her mind. A storm gathered inside, concern and compassion and acceptance and empathy, all those things and more in equal measure, and that secret part of her ached just to hold him, that she might take his suffering away. But while all those feelings jockeyed for position within her mind and in her heart, a dark horse surged up from the depths and passed them all to cross her lips paramount.  
  
“I cannot abide this. This reckless and, and, foolhardy. I won’t allow it.”  
  
Indignation. Or just indignity. Anger riding atop a steed of fear, forging a path of selfish need. The only thing in this whole place that could quiet her vengeful mind; she needed him. Or did she merely want to need him so that the things she felt when she was near him did not seem so avaricious and unbecoming?  
  
“It is not your decision, Inquisitor.” And he looked at her now, those golden eyes not honeyed but aflame under brows set heavy with anger of his own. On his feet, he began to pace, back and forth, that caged beast, agitated and wild; all those restless behaviours suddenly making sense.  
  
“You command my forces, and I am to have no opinion on an issue that directly challenges your ability to do so?” There it came again, those unfamiliar words, that unacquainted voice. The Inquisition.  
  
“I command your forces, yes, but you do not command _me_ , not in this. I am through with days of blind obedience.”  
  
“I will not stand idle while you risk your life, Cullen. You could _die_.”  
  
“Of course I know the risk, better than anyone! You think I choose this lightly? I have to do this.”  
  
Cullen growled with frustration and turned his back on her, standing stoic at the window with folded arms, proving that he did not need layers of leather and steel to armour himself against her. The silence that followed, as cold and as sharp as the mountains themselves, seemed similarly to stretch on forever. Each moment it dragged on, she feared the divide would grow insurmountable, unscalable peaks of reticence that no tongue would reach.  
  
“I have already seen a future without you in it,” Olivia uttered softly, desperately, hoping it would bridge the ireful abyss. “I would rather not see another. The…Inquisition…needs you.”  
  
He cocked his head to the side. “Does it?”  
  
“You stand at its heart.” Her fingers gripped tightly at the desk, something solid beneath her.  
  
Cullen turned back to the window proper. “If you had any idea what you…” he trailed off distantly, and then sighed. “I will…think on it.”  
  
The silence set in again, a little warmer than before but still tense and unyielding, with nothing left on either side to fill it. Olivia felt suddenly exhausted, the days of unrest, the hours of disquiet, and these moments of catastrophic hopelessness crashing down on her all at once. Rising to the surface, like some oily sheen, was a choking shame at being so engrossed in her own wallowing that she did not see him sinking alongside. Had she been more attentive they might have held each other afloat, but now her hands were slick and unfit to hold anything.  
  
With a heaving sigh, she pushed herself up from her perch at the Commander’s desk. “I think we both need rest. Good night, Cullen.”  
  
Cullen said nothing as she turned to go, merely stared out into the night, scratching idly at his neck. She was halfway to the door when he called out. “Inquisitor?”  
  
Olivia paused. “Yes?”  
  
“Do you…play chess?”  
  
“Chess...?" she asked, perplexed. "Um. Of course.”  
  
“Perhaps you’d join me for a game some time.”  
  
“Certainly.”  
  
A new panic grabbed her as she braved the path back to her chambers.  
  
Olivia Trevelyan had never played a game of chess in her life.


	6. Undermining

Three days came and went. The end of the third ushered in a sense of welcome finality, the ultimate sentence in a chapter that had dragged on far too long. Olivia watched from the library window as the last of the departing mages trickled out with the waning light, under close watch of a vanguard of templars, infantry and even a few clerics who just barely clouded their disdain in the interest of keeping the peace. Around a quarter of the collective opted to take their chances and leave the Inquisition's ranks, far fewer than she anticipated given the furore. Those who remained made a concerted showing of their commitment to the cause. The infirmaries had more volunteers than they could reasonably employ, many had already accepted field assignments, and the troops would be better equipped than ever for fighting Venatori magic now that the Commander could institute live fire training exercises at home. The miasma of animosity was rapidly lifting as the dust settled, a hundred disparate pieces somehow falling harmoniously into place. Even the Grand Enchanter was newly demure and respectful, apparently, though Olivia was yet to cross her path.

The house stood to see another dawn.

It was a relief to none so great as the Inquisitor, who had eked out the days tied to her desk, interred in three weeks' worth of paperwork and with just a blinking stream of servants and messengers to connect her to the outside world. Hardly the most stimulating of tasks, she pored over reports that vacillated between the painfully mundane — general building expenses and arguments over the evidently complex anatomy of a proper mortar mixture — to the disconcerting — a surge in red templar troop movements, frequent Venatori incursions, yet more Fade rift sightings. She read it all, signed it all, even the things that required neither of her, and made notes and queries on things she felt necessitated more immediate action, too numerous to count. The farce of a ball at Halamshiral neared, with not just the life of the Empress but the empire hanging in the balance, even while it seemed the country was crumbling to ruin beneath their feet. Perhaps more worringly, Varric had requested an audience, strangely pragmatic of him, and a sure sign that she should be concerned. It seemed that for every one task they conquered, forty more loomed in its shadow, pulling her in twelve different directions.

However an elaborate showing of industriousness, though, what she had really been doing was avoiding. Avoiding responsibility by burying herself in it. Avoiding the various confrontations she had, in her sleepless hours, imagined waiting outside her chamber door. Avoiding all manner of shames, entirely self-inflicted. Finally, with a night's rest behind her and a few calmer days on the immediate horizon, she'd unshackled herself from her quarters and ventured out, though gingerly, into the living world beyond the stagnant one of paper and ink and isolation.

She'd taken a late—though brief—lunch in the Great Hall, quickly reaching her fill of both the cheese plate and obsequious pandering from nobles who had apparently been clamouring for the chance to insult her intelligence with spurs soused in honey. They complimented her on the quaintness of the furnishings, on her courage for such pedestrian garb and 'common' hairstyle, on all manner of vain and vacuous subjects that meant nothing to a woman with true evils biting at her heels. Orlesians. She didn't think anything would ever make her miss the nobility of the Marches, where things were not always friendly, but they had the common decency to stab you in your front. One thing in the Orlesians' favour, at least, was that it was easy enough to slip away as they engrossed themselves in games of one-upmanship, steeped in their irrelevancy. Upstairs in the library, she sat now in a quiet alcove, grateful for the simple pleasures of a hot cup of tea and a friend with whom she need not play pretend. Finally, she could breathe.

"Nice view?" Dorian teased, busily setting out the board. "If you want to stare at pretty mages you could just…turn your head."

"Sorry," she replied with a bashful smile. "Just making sure."

"Making sure the wicked men in dresses don't set the place on fire on the way out?"

"Honestly? A little." Olivia sighed disapprovingly at her own admission. That kind of thinking could set fires as quickly as any mage. "What do you make of all this, Dorian?"

"What does the would-be Magister make of all your quaint southern mage problems? I take from that stern look that uproarious laughter is not a satisfactory reply." His moustache twitched with his smirk. "What I make of things is that this little war was a long time coming. You can't just lock people up for the simple crime of daring to be born and expect them to bring sweet rolls to tea."

"But mages  _are_  dangerous, even you must admit that much."

"Certainly. So are you! With a bow or with a smile. Should we lock you away for being too pretty? You've as much control over that as mages do over their particular talents."

Olivia knit her brows together, tongued unconsciously at the hard ridge of scar tissue at the inside corner of her mouth. "Circles are all they've known. Do you not think that a sudden influx of freedoms is as much to blame for the state of things as their confinement in the first place?"

"Possibly. Having never known that kind of confinement, I, like you, can only sit here and drink tea and pontificate." Dorian shrugged. "The Magisterium is hardly a perfect example to strive towards, but the most important power for anyone to possess is that of choice. I assume you meant well, but conscripting them only inflamed an already festering sore. You answered their desperation with yet more servitude."

Though she favoured his candour, at times his lashes did sting. Deservedly so, perhaps. "So I'm no better than Alexius," Olivia mused, numb.

"That is not what I said. Power can make a demon of anyone, but mages do tend to be a little more  _literal_  about it. Whatever Alexius…used to be…" Dorian started, downcast as an edge of wistfulness cut through his cocky façade, "…what he became was undeniably monstrous. You've made amends best you could; perhaps Alexius might have done the same, given the chance. It hardly matters now. I doubt this happy haze will last, of course. One problem at a time though, right? Onto the next. Now, do you want to learn this, or wax philosophical all evening? I'm perfectly inclined toward either, but if the latter, I'm going to need something a little stronger," he said, lifting his cup and swishing the contents.

With a deep breath, she nodded toward the board with grim determination. As he set things up, she plucked one of the ornate pieces up and turned it over in her fingers. All sharp edges and brutal angles, shoulders carved like wings of flame, a downward blade, a valiantly raised shield. The face, though, was blank bar two shadowed gashes etched deep into the stone helmet, chillingly inhuman. Glancing about, she saw that they were all similarly styled, emblazoned with flames while the distinguishing features had been melted away, leaving just faceless stone analogues of human shapes. With a frown, she placed the piece back where she had found it and examined the board itself, a map of rigid hexes thrice coloured, with a host of figures arranged like a tiny army before her, white to oppose the black forces Dorian commanded. No place for uncertainty. The pit of her stomach fell away into dread.

"Dorian, this seems awfully complicated." It came out more a whine than she intended.

"Chin up. It's only  _slightly_  more intricate than mending a tear in the sky."

"Oh. Wonderful."

"Fear not, darling. I'll be gentle, this being your first time and all." Her blush was as reflexive as his wink and his grin, grey eyes sparkling wickedly in the light. "The basic objective is as follows:  _win_. And if that's a too general an instruction, you must lay siege to the opponent's forces and capture their Divine."

Olivia stared at him humorlessly. "Capture the Divine? You can't be serious. Does this not seem in poor taste?"

"Only for the sod forced to play black. Oh look, that's me, the dastardly Tevinter, how fitting!" The mage laughed. "Besides, you know the Chantry; they are slaves to their martyrdom. Now, here," he gestured to the front row of carved robed figures, "these are your enchanters. Enchanters move forward, one space per turn in straight line. They are fodder for your war, rather inconsequential in the scheme of things. And a clear demonstration of this game's southern bastardisation." Olivia winced, but Dorian did not allow her the time to linger on the thought, moving on through the ranks. "On the ends, you have your spires. The spire may move any number of places side-to-side or diagonally."

"How does a spire move at all?"

"Like all things unexplainable:  _magic_ ," Dorian replied with a flourish, a spark of lightning erupting between his sorcerous fingers. "Beside the spires are the knights, who are your most dashing warriors. They cut a path through anything that lies before them, provided those obstructions are within two paces and a step to the side. Though that sounds far less dramatic, doesn't it? They thrive in the thick of things. Here, in this centre line are your clerics. Note how each occupies a distinct colour; they may move any number of adjacent places, but never deviate from their assigned shade. Bound to their flocks, as it were. Such a dismal existence; life needs a little colour, don't you think? Hello? Still with me?"

"Barely."

"Good enough. Now, here at the back, is where the true power lies. Typical, yes? Sending everyone else out first to do the dirty work. The grand cleric, and the Divine. The grand cleric combines the movement of the spire and the cleric, because she's far too important to actually leave the cathedral, I suppose, so she just…brings it with her?"

Olivia laughed. "More magic? Dorian, are you sure you even know how to play this game?"

"Well, I know how  _I_  play it. Anyway, at last we come to the lady of the hour. The Divine, unwieldy old nag that she is, moves just a step at a time, but in any direction. Backwards, most frequently, if you ask me; please, don't tell Cassandra I said that, I'll never hear the end of it. She is the ultimate prize, and she must rely on all of these others to protect her."

"A rather foolish gambit on her part, as it turns out," she muttered morosely.

"If it makes you feel any better, I don't think there's any contingency in the rules for an ancient magister swooping out of the sky and obliterating the board. Like I said, it's a  _southern_  game. But, that does give me a fabulous idea for the next time the Commander has me pinned. Ooh, I'm all aquiver with anticipation. But I digress. Let's get on and have a fiddle, let you get a feel for how things move about."

"Are you still talking about chess?" Olivia teased.

He grinned. "Let's just see where things lead, shall we?"

It was not a delicate game, by any means, or at least she was not a delicate hand. All of the romance of strategy and guile was lost on her and in her stilted movements. Any time she fell into a stupor of forgetting, which was often, she resorted to outright mimicry until she found some footing, however unstable. Dorian did his best to coach in his special way, but the board seemed only to grow in size the more she stared at it. Her pieces, those he had not handily captured, lay scattered to the winds in disarray, no art about their maneuverings. Trying to make sense of what was happening only made her head hurt and all her knowledge slip through her fingers like sand until she wasn't sure she could even tie her shoes anymore. If chess was a dance, it was one so intricate that Olivia Trevelyan could not imagine ever grasping the steps, and apologised frequently for clomping on Dorian's toes. It was hard to know what disappointed her more: the ineptitude she felt, having always considered herself an educated woman, or the creeping acceptance that she might never take Cullen up on his invitation. But maybe that was for the best.

"How  _do_  you know how to play, Dorian?" Olivia asked, apathetically shoving a cleric—or was that a spire?—across the board, caring little where it landed, not as if it mattered. "Not exactly complementary with your culture, is it?"

"Unflattering insinuations about the worth of mages aside, the underlying game of strategy is universal. The pieces themselves mean little, I could just as well replace each one with something I plucked from my arse and it wouldn't change the way the game is played, except that I might find willing partners a little scarcer."

She grimaced. "What delightful imagery."

"You prove my point." Dorian beamed. "The true game is in the reading of one's opponent, in the anticipation of attack and the managing of one's own limitations so as to mitigate the losses. It's not just a chess skill, Inquisitor, but also one of life _._  And one can learn much about a person by playing a round of chess with them."

"I dread to think what you've gleaned from me," she muttered with a scoff.

He sighed and nodded. "A little like flipping through a picture book for children, currently. But fret not, darling; we'll fill out those pages yet." Olivia could not even feign offence, blunt though he may be; she certainly could not defend any sum of sophistication. "But I think the far more important question: why  _your_ sudden interest in chess?"

Olivia shrugged. "I thought I should take a hobby. Something to serve as a distraction," she replied evasively, casually sipping at her tea. A Tevinter brew, specially procured for him after much haranguing of the ambassador, it was surprisingly light, neither bitter nor cloyingly spiced nor overly sweet, but simply a warm, flowery note on her tongue and then gone in a gasp. Like magic, or snowflakes.

"Ah, indeed. Hobbies and distractions are grand. And how do you like them? Six-foot-two, blonde hair, brown eyes? Oh, how did it go?" The mage squinted, tapping a long, elegant finger against his chin as he considered. "'Voice like shorn velvet, tattered and torn, tied about her wrists, held over her head; she is bound, bent, blissfully broken to his will…?'"

Or perhaps the tea was not quite gone; she choked on a swallow, liquid shooting up her nose, cheeks flushing crimson as she sputtered.

Dorian laughed. "That spirit, Cole, says the most  _interesting_  things. I must say, I'd rather like to read  _that_  book."

Images flashed through her mind, unrepentant, those most secret of secret thoughts, the most unseemly, the most lascivious and unspeakable, suddenly spoken aloud and not even by her own tongue, but thieved from her dreams and spread as poetic whispers among her peers. So worried about the hawks circling over her head that she never noticed the mockingbird at the window, stealing her salacious song. What else had been taken out of her?

Too incensed, too mortified was she to form a reply, and what would she even say when any reply she gave would serve as confirmation? Denial would be as good as an admission of her guilt, the flush in her cheeks and her livid pause, her gagging on her own tongue already having betrayed whatever conviction she might have mustered. She was, after all, a picture book, with pages laid bare full of imageries even a simpleton could readily interpret, and Dorian was not that. Olivia pinched the bridge of her nose against the lingering sting of the tea in her nose, swallowed the metallic remains to quench the inferno of humiliation burning up her guts. If she could not outrun it, she could at least try to slow it.

"I beg you Dorian, you must say nothing. To anyone, but least of all to… _him_." And she did, with word and tenor and forlorn gaze, with hands now clasped together upon the table, she begged with all the dignity she had left, a scraping.

"Oh, please," he replied, crossing his legs as he sat back in his chair, voice dripping with affront. She gritted her teeth at the idea that he might find cause for injury. "I like to tease, but I'm no idle gossip. All right, that's not strictly true. But I would never betray  _you_. Besides, who can blame you? The man could melt the ice off a glacier." His eyes narrowed, the sly grin sliding into a quizzical purse. "Foolish question, though, um…why don't  _you_  say something? You've obviously thought about it in  _great_  detail."

"I couldn't. I can't." She took another sip of the tea to combat the sudden desert in her mouth, furious blush renewed at his suggestion.

"And yet you want to play games with him. Literally, and it seems, also figuratively?"

"I know," she admitted, throwing her hands up, exasperated with herself. Her mind was an endless plane of hexes, and she no clue even which piece she was to move. "I have no idea what I'm doing, Dorian. What I feel... I can't just... I'm the Inquisitor."

"Oh, I forgot they made you turn in your humanity. Silly me!"

Olivia rolled her eyes. "Dorian, I have responsibilities. There are expectations, and etiquettes."

That was the official line; the lie she told herself to stave off despair. The rigid and uncompromising reality of her position was a dependable comfort, noble and unwavering, respectable. It absolved her of the responsibility of confronting herself, her feelings, her secrets sins. It was clear from his dubious look that it was not a sufficient argument for Dorian, either. He opened his mouth to rebut, but she spoke again before his voice could reach his lips, filling the air with excuses before he could with reasons.

"There are also some…extenuating circumstances from which I should not distract. And we're at war." At war; with the world, with themselves, with each other. The Commander's confession of the other evening weighed heavily upon her mind, moated by a treacherous sea of her own shame. It was not her place, nor her right, to impose upon him as she had, to cast her nets of fear in hopes to snare or save him. He was not hers to command. Would she never learn the terrible cost of forcing her will? How much blood, how many scars would it take to remind her? "We're at war," the broken part of her echoed. "And I fear one or both of us will almost certainly be dead before it's done."

"That's a bet I aim to lose, my friend." The mage nodded and, offering a warm smile, reached across the table and placed a hand upon hers. "You and I know better than anyone that time is a fickle and fragile thing. Would you really deny yourself a moment's happiness just because it won't last forever? Nothing does, you know. Why does 'proper' weigh more than pleasure?"

Olivia sighed, vexed. "Because you and I were raised very differently. And so was he." Realisation dawned, and she gasped audibly. "Templars take vows. He may not even…" she trailed off, her last words rattling about in her chest like a whooping cough, heavy in her lungs, suffocating her slowly. He may not even want her; or if he did, be able to act without utterly compromising what he was. What was worse?

"He  _used_  to be a templar. It's not like they cut off the offending parts, is it? And what exactly is problem, anyway? It's not as if 'blessed' Andstrate didn't take a fall or twenty upon Maferath's sword before things got nasty; the woman had children, for crying out loud. They do  _tell_  you where babies come from down here, don't they?" Dorian laughed, and she rolled her eyes once more at his impertinent vulgarity, prompting him to raise his hands in surrender. "Fine, fine, I can see my advice is clearly unsolicited, so I'll say no more on the matter. Well, perhaps one more thing, if you'll indulge me: I wouldn't be so quick to count upon your death, darling. I happen know for a fact, you've a knight in play who'll cut a path through anything that lies before him, if it means protecting his divine."

She bolted upright, wilting lungs suddenly buoyant. "What?"

He smirked. "I told you. You can learn a lot from a game of chess."


	7. Drabbling

Ink bleeds into the fine wrinkles as he presses the quill to the page, and for a moment, he is unsure, but then pushes his hand with haste into action before the pigment is spent.

_Inquisitor,_

He pulls the hand away and inspects, brow wilting with discontent. The penmanship is perfectly serviceable, if a little blurred where it has bled, where he hesitated in the beginning, and where the subtle shake in his hand has won the war against the honesty of his lines. It is barely perceptible, but he notices and it is grating. But there is something else, a niggling in him, an undefinable wrongness, a twitch in his fingers that urges him to start again. So he does, fine point of the nib grazing the parchment where he strikes the Inquisitor through and, no room for delay, begins anew.

_Olivia,_

The corner of his mouth curls up into a smile, an involuntary action, as all of the most candid ones are. The letters spill into one another, each one making an effortless connection to the next; a single, uninterrupted stroke from beginning to end. Elegant lines and silken curves that mask the tremor from his chains, granting him a moment's grace. Her name on his fingertips feels as he imagines the woman herself must, welcoming and willowy. Belonging. It is impossible not to think on all the things that might follow such a beginning.

He snaps the parchment up from the desk and crushes it in his leather-clad hand, sighing. He dips the quill and begins again.

_Inquisitor,_

Broken and clumsy, shaky and forced, there is no pleasure in a word so laden with discretion. Not even a name, but just a title. A shield to hide behind, a weapon to thrust ahead. He has worn plenty of them himself, still does. Sometimes his arms feel tired for the carrying, but without, he is nothing, only exposed and defenseless. One day perhaps he would have no need for so much armour. Today is not that day, and it is a labour.

There are days when he does naught but sit at this desk and write until his hand cramps, until his arm is numb from the effort, until he can barely keep his eyes from closing. Hundreds of grieved letters of commiseration and condolence have passed through his hand, letters surely greeted with aching hearts and bitter tears, but even then, he never wanted for the words. But he wrote those numb, detached, knowing he would never have to see the faces of the women who had lost their husbands, children who had lost their mothers, parents who had lost their children. It was a duty; a grim one, a necessary one, but a duty nonetheless. This is not that. This is a need, but not a duty. It is an intimate urgency to satisfy a sudden craving, and it keeps him from satisfying another.

His mind is at its clearest when he is in command, but when he thinks of her, he is anything but in command. There are things he wants to say, and things he has to force himself from saying. Things that are not for ink and paper, not for prying eyes or strangers' hands. They are not the Commander's words but just Cullen's, a man trapped, screaming behind a wall of secrets and steel. Sometimes his armour can feel a cage.

In his uncertainty, more ink drips from the tip of the pen, splatters darkly to the page, and for a moment reminds him of blood, except blood is easier to draw. No ability required nor subtlety or prudence to thwart it. A bladed staff passionately swung, an arm too weary from weeks of battle, a shield thrown up a moment too late, a mouth overflowing with blood. If only his other thoughts came as quickly as the remembered taste of it to his tongue, the phantom pain to his lips.

He snaps the parchment up, crushes it, sighs and begins again.

_Inquisitor,_

_I know your time is precious. I pray neither did you waste too much of it indulging me this afternoon, nor to take my victories too severely._

The first was a vicious conquest; he had already cut a swathe through her side of the board before the extent of her falsehood grasped him. She plays like Dorian; they even cheat the same, though she with an innocence that could not be coached. The smile creeps back to his lips recalling the frustrated purse of hers; her grave looks of concentration; her fingers hovering, faltering over her pieces with her frequent indecision. The flush in her cheeks when she lost, flustered. The second game he played with a much gentler touch, ignoring the dozen or more moments he could have taken her, instead drawing out the time until the mountains swallowed the sun, just for the chance to listen to her speak, to sigh, to curse.

He snaps the parchment up, crushes it, sighs.

_Inquisitor,_

_Thank you. Another game soon, perhaps?_

_Commander Cullen_

He drops the quill into the pot. Perfectly serviceable. Laden with discretion. A weapon, slipped into a paper sheath, cannot cut.


	8. Stifling

Summer had an unmistakable perfume. Flowers overflowed in the market square; sweet pea and lilies, wild roses and gardenia, those most popular among young brides. Their saccharine fragrance mingled on salt-stung breezes that billowed across the sparkling Amarathine. Briny ocean waves all entangled with strings of giant kelp smashed upon the shore, quenching sun-scorched rock. Outside the city, the leas sweltered; a bouquet of dusty, parched earth and dry plains grasses, which spread their seed on the wind and lazed into dormancy ahead of the winter freeze. A magical fusion of earth and sea and sky, coalescing into the incense of life.

But then the wind died.

The pungent clime took hold six days ago, those cool ocean breezes barely more than a whisper in the grass, the smashing waves reduced to a gentle lap, the flowers wilting morosely in their carts under a sun unrestrained by even a single cloud. Fishing boats sat idle at the docks, none eager to make the arduous trip to deeper waters knowing their bounties would broil and rot back at port. It was the longest heat spell in recent memory; the longest ever to hear some tell it, a declaration argued vehemently by the old guard who recalled a particular summer of forty years passed, so dry and so hot that the skies turned vengeful and darkened with smoke from wild fires that burned up all of the Vimmarks.

The mages, some said; it was the mages responsible for the heat, stealing up the winds with their magic. The Maker, others whispered; it was a punishment for impiety, for the war, for breaking apart his Bride's ministry and for surrendering to sin and vice. Portentous murmurings crept through the city that the Divine had a plan to end the war; a great purge, they said. She'd summoned them all together, and planned to cleanse the faithless in the righteous fire of the penitent. In either case, citizens flocked to the Chantry, which pulsed with prayer every day from first light until sunset. They occupied every pew, spilled out into the atrium and the garden, crowded about the library. Hundreds of perspiring bodies pressed together; the stench was toe-curling. The Revered Mother was unsparing with the incense, and lay sisters stood at the head of the congregation with large fans and took shifts in waving them, until fights began to break out over position nearest to the musty breeze. The brothers ejected the agitators, and things would settle for a time, but the heat made people wild and irritable. With much work to do, Olivia left her desk in the library and set up in a tiny attic space near the top of the disused bell tower.

Up there, the heat was stifling. Instead of flowers and the sea, she was drowning in her own cloying musk, muddled with a punch of ink and vellum that had grown clammy with her perspirations, and the acridity of stale smoke that permeated every tome in every stack. Each breath of the stagnant attic air was hot tar in her lungs, viscous and strangling, and the tiny windows hung open uselessly with no breeze to draw in. Even stripped out of her coat, there was little relief from the dank humidity. Her scalp crawled with sweat; it soaked her hair at her neck and snaked down her down her back and chest in maddening beads, gluing her blouse to her skin with repulsive, chafing tenacity. The Sisters refilled her water basin regularly, as if she was some stray cat whose presence they tolerated because she kept the mice at bay. Were it not for the frequent interruptions, she might have taken complete leave of decency and disrobed right down to her smalls. What she would not give for a reprieve.

It was not just the physical discomfort of the torrid space. In four days, she had only managed to eke out the work of two. Her concentration had wilted like the plants in the garden, all the water in the world not enough to perk her up. Though she knew the Chant better than the lines of her own face, the quill was unruly, and refused to make the letters she commanded. It seemed that the knife did more work, dulled point in her left hand scraping out the ink that the right hand pitilessly wasted on nonsense.

"Make me to rest in the warmest places," she muttered as she carefully forced the shape of each letter through her hand. She laughed as she wiped her forehead with an already soaked sleeve. "Consider my heart steeled, dear Maker."

She had not made it through the end of the twelfth verse when a timid knock sounded at the door. Olivia continued about her work as it groaned ajar, expecting the sloshing of water as they filled the basin. Instead, the knock came again, a little louder than before, more creaking as the door opened wider.

"A-apologies, serah," Sister Hadley stammered, fragile voice of voice and hovering nervously, like a broken-winged songbird hoping to avoid the cat's notice. "A v-visitor. Down in the g-garden…"

"Half the city is in the garden, Sister Hadley," Olivia answered distractedly, cursing under her breath as the ink erred once more, and hurriedly scraping at the mark before it could set. "Should I visit with them all?"

"N-no, serah. The Bann…"

"Father?" Olivia jolted up, suddenly alert. She dropped the pen and knife into the rest and pushed back from her desk. "Perhaps you might lead with that next time, Sister." After a quick stretch of her aching back, she went to the basin and scooped up a handful of water, splashing it over her face. Warm, but it was some relief. She paused and peered sidelong at the timid woman. "You may go," she said, patting her face and neck dry with a cloth.

The sister bowed low and backed out, closing the door. Olivia sighed. Between the heat and tedium and the sister's flapping, her teeth were sharper than usual, but the truth was she was grateful for the distraction. It felt forever since she had had a proper conversation with someone other than her shadow, and it seemed she was woefully out of practice. With a disgusted glower, she shrugged her prickly coat on and worked the buttons as she headed down the rickety old stairs of the tower.

The miasma of the throngs in the chantry was as good as any wall, her eyes watering the moment she slammed into it, but against instinct to run back up to escape it, she took a deep breath and made a determined line for the side door. Every time she had to brush against a sweaty body, she cringed, skin crawling even inside the protection of her coat. Thoughts of slippery bare skin and matted wet hair rubbing against her turned her stomach. With the hold on her lungs failing and nostrils twitching anxiously, she forced a polite smile to her lips to excuse her urgent shoving. Finally, she laid a hand on the handle and pushed through, gasping. The hot air outside was fresher, but hardly refreshing.

She found father in the garden as promised. At over six feet, broad shouldered and a wild mane of peppered black hair, he cut an imposing figure amongst the sagging masses. Arms carved from years of physical labour folded across his barrel chest, he looked a man of half his years, and steely eyes were ever hawk-like in their intensity. They softened just a little as they found her, and despite a mask of beard, it was clear that he was smiling. So much as he ever did.

"Apparently Ostwick is feeling very pious," he grumbled as she neared.

Olivia laughed and craned up to kiss his cheek. "If they can pray this weather away, let them be."

The Bann grunted and nodded behind him, toward the rear path. She looped an arm through his and leaned against him as they began to stroll, those piercing eyes wordlessly dispersing the loitering crowds that blocked their passage. As they walked, she rested her head upon his shoulder the way she had ever since she was tall enough to do so, all the sweeter for the way she knew it embarrassed him, and she smirked at his quiet groan.

They followed the path through the despondent vegetable garden and to the gate at the courtyard between the chantry proper and the monastery at the rear. The yard used to thrum with chants of war and the scuffle of feet, of wooden training weapons clashing against shields and the brothers barking commands. Now it sat empty, ragged weeds shooting up between pavers that had grown black with no feet to burnish them. As war unfurled its banners across the Marches, most of the boys evacuated to the far more defensible monastery in Wycome. The elder ones hastened through their Vigils, and likely rushed to the Maker's side. Only a handful remained, scholars and solitary caretakers, those whose talent or taste for bloodshed had run dry.

"You've heard about the Conclave."

"Of course. Though popular opinion seems to be that it's less a 'Conclave' and more a 'March.'"

"You should hope not."

"Why would I care—?" she began with a laugh, but her father possessed a great talent for saying much without saying a word, and with one glance into those stormy eyes, she found it suddenly less funny. "No."

"Olivia," he said in his stern way, his silencing way; the way that used to turn her knees to jelly when she was a child and he caught her stealing sweets from the larder before dinner. But she was not eight years old anymore.

Olivia stopped dead, releasing his arm and folding hers across her chest. She was her father's daughter, digging her heels in and preparing for the fight. "Father, no. That's absurd. I can't leave. I have a thousand things I need to do. The  _esteemed_  Mother in Markham is insufferably impatient. Let Everett and Aidan go. Aren't they  _obligated_  to?"

"Everett was on his way, but has gotten caught up in little Vael's crusade. We've no word from Aidan." The Bann frowned briefly. "I'm sure he'll be there. But just in case he—"

Olivia was barely listening, too caught up in her own affront to be concerned at  _why_  her brothers were neglecting a duty that was rightfully theirs. "Lydia, then. She's practically the Revered Mother's shadow; surely, she would be a more suitable choice. Maker's breath, even Tillie—" Even as her frantic rambling spilled out, she knew the answer, but it was only confirmed when she noticed her father's gaze drop to the ground. She shook her head. "Mother." The word felt like a curse on her lips.

"It may be dangerous," he said. Only in her father's mind could that seem a reasonable explanation for sending her halfway across the continent to a martial assembly. Only in this  _family._

"And I'm the expendable one," she spat sourly.

The Bann's head shot up. "No," he said firmly, a gravelly mix of anger and ardor. With a hand that still seemed so large to her despite her years, he reached up and cupped her chin, rough skin of his thumb just barely stroking the mess of gnarled flesh at her jaw. "You're the capable one."

Olivia jerked her head away, scowling. Perhaps he believed it, but his placation had the opposite effect, her blood boiling through her veins with thunderous savagery. All her adult life he had told her to follow her own path, and so she had, even when she knew she travelled a road paved with discontent. She chose education and independence, refused to bind herself to a life of servitude, refused to marry herself to the Maker, and that effectively made her a tramp in her mother's eyes. But they tolerated her choices because she was securely couched in denial. She did not have to bind herself to anything because she always had been, with just enough slack in the rope to let her run with the illusion of freedom. They would always yank her back when she strayed too far.

Her head suddenly throbbed, her eyes stung from the sweat, and her patience had long since simmered away into nothing. This damned heat. She rubbed at her eyes, but the ink on her fingers only caused them to sting more, and as she cursed quietly, she pulled her hand away and held it out to show him the black stains. "Look. Look at this. This is my only stake in this war, father. These idiots burn every book they come across and it falls to me to piece it all back together. Do you know how many copies of the Chant alone I've made since Wintermarch?"

"And perhaps that  _is_  your purpose. Wars are won in the annals of history. Order must be restored. The Chantry  _must be restored_. No one is asking you to save the world, Livvy. Just to stand. Because Trevelyans—"

"—serve the Maker, I know," she finished with a sigh. She was a Trevelyan, and she was eight years old again, weak in the knees and paralysed by guilt, and the leash was tugging. "Very well, Papa."

The Bann smiled and clapped his hands down on her shoulders, gave a light squeeze. "That's my girl. You'll ship to Highever in two days."

Feeling thoroughly defeated, Olivia threw her head back and stared up at the sky. It seemed so big, so far away, so impossibly empty. "At least it's cold in Ferelden."

"And smells of dog," he added. And actually  _laughed_.


	9. Unmasking

The woollen collar of his too-tight jacket chafed in a most infuriating way, his skin pricked raw for his scratching. It constricted across his chest, or maybe that was just the anxiety pressing upon him. The borrowed sword in his hand felt as foreign as the surrounds, and poorly balanced, not intended for use; an ornament to dangle from the belt of a nobleman who made all his cuts with his tongue. With luck, he would not need to use it.

Cullen had scarcely felt more useless. A lion in a den of asps; pinned down, they reared up in a grand display, but he could not spare the roar. The rattle and howl of conflict rung out through the palace, and the ballroom ran red with regal blood, but the greater conflict flared up inside of him: a battle between his primal instinct to protect her, and his sworn duty to serve her. A voice in him told him to be calm, reminded him that she was not alone, of the myriad ways she had already cheated far surer deaths. But tell that to the hands that shook with idle frustration, that clenched with painful might into impotent fists at his sides and around the hilt of an impotent blade, or to the cold vice of iron dread clamped around his spine, the only thing paralysing him against the ruthless urge to march.

Duty won the war.

He barked his commands with a clarity that belied the innumerable conflicts that raged ceaselessly within him, playing a gambit with his soldiers' lives to protect a man who an hour ago would just as soon have ended them as allied with them had it proved convenient to do so. There was no honour here, no integrity, just a precariously balanced scale of mutual benefit. They could not lose Gaspard, not now, not when the fate of the empire fell at his feet. And so there Cullen sat, dug into a foxhole with the most venomous snake, with his ear pressed to the door listening to the resonance of a battle he should be fighting. Waiting. It had been far too long already.

"This night has gone far better than I could even have hoped." Gaspard laughed suddenly, breaking the tense silence that had settled over the group, breaking Cullen's concentration at the door. "Celene, dead! Who would have thought the Inquisitor so adept at The Game?"

The Duke laughed once more, but drew quickly silent as he gripped his chin and tapped a finger thoughtfully against the cheek of his garish bronze mask. Behind, his shaded eyes drew narrow and vicious with deliberation.

"Think what a union we would make. The might of Orlais under my robust leadership, bolstered by the influence of the Inquisition. The fortune of her position adequately undoes her otherwise low birth. And she is tolerable to look at, in a quaint, Marcher sort of fashion. Fine hips, though.  _Quite_  ridable." The sound that escaped him was nothing short of filthy; the Duke forgot himself in his glee and close quarters. "Perhaps she will be better behaved than my first wife. Or at least more liable to be tamed."

It was unbecoming of a man of the Commander's station, this feeling, this… _jealousy_. Maker's breath, but he was, and he had never felt its like. It was a wild fire in his veins, the smoke of his fury a thick fog, and he could smell it, the sulphurous tang of rivalry smarting in his nostrils. It oozed like grease into his hinges so that he had to struggle to keep himself contained. Teeth gritting, Cullen's fingers groaned around the hilt of a blade that he promptly imagined driving through the Gaspard's gut.

As a tired aside, the Duke added, "Of course, your loyalty would not go unrewarded, Commander."

There was no safe reply in him, and so Cullen remained silent. His pulse thundered his ears, throbbed painfully at his temple— _boom-boom, boom-boom_ —like a grim countdown of each second squandered on this bastard they so badly needed. Twenty.  _Boom-boom._  Gaspard wittered on, perfectly at ease and joking with his personal guards. Fifty.  _Boom-boom._  Cullen pressed his ear harder against the door so that he might not hear what was said this side of it. Ninety.  _Boom-boom._  Things seemed quieter; then a rumbling of footsteps. Hundred-fifty.  _Boom-boom._  Shouts in the hall, but he could not make out the muffled Orlesian accent. Two hundred.  _Boom-boom._  The Commander threw a palm up, hissed for silence. Two-twenty-five.  _Boom-boo—_

Not his pulse, but a fist pounding against a door, somewhere nearby. Cullen shot a glance to his two men; a twitch of his finger and their weapons were at hand.  _Boom-boom._  Closer now; the rattle of a door swinging violently open. Gaspard leapt from the desk on which he sat at leisure, staggered backward into the bookshelf at the rear wall, and there he cowered under shelter of his guards.  _Boom-boom-boom_. Closer still; the next room down. Cullen threw his back to the wall, adjusted his grip on the hilt. Shadows danced in the crack of light at his feet. Muscles twitching; there was a taste, a tingle of magic in the air.

_Boom-boom-boom._

The handle turned, the door loosened. A figure emerged in the doorway, and instinct took over; Cullen's arm snapped out, grabbed a handful of uniform. A flash of gold and green; trappings of the Imperial guard, but that meant little in this place of disguises. Twisting into a firm hold, he shoved forward with his whole weight, ramming with brutal force to pin the guard against the door frame, elbow crushed into the man's neck while the blade hand jabbed threateningly into his side. The whites of the guard's eyes shone with panic behind a scratched and dented mask, a whimpering gurgle leaking from his throat as he bucked uselessly against Cullen's bulk.

"Well, there go any designs I might have had for sneaking into your quarters."

The Commander's head snapped to the side at the sound of Dorian's voice. The mage smiled cheerfully, leaning against the wall with casual aplomb, a handful of Inquisition soldiers at his flank. Still in the grip of an adrenal haze, heart pounding, chest heaving, Cullen's gaze flicked back to the guard who had all but stopped struggling, whose eyes had begun to droop lazily, body sag. His own body refused to uncoil.

"The Inquisitor…?" It rasped out of him on the back of a heavy breath, the only thought he could manage. Barely a complete thought at all.

"Sent me to fetch you. The Duchess is dead. Formalities await." Dorian nodded toward the guard. "Do let the lad go, Commander. Unless you want to spend the rest of the evening cleaning his shit off your boots."

Cullen nodded slowly, exhaled, and one by one, his tensed muscles began to slacken. The guard slumped to the floor, choking gasps in between coughs. Glowering, Cullen tossed Gaspard's worthless blade across the room, sent it clattering to the floor at the man's feet.

Gaspard snatched it up as he rose, his viperous stare settled on the Commander as he attached it to his belt. He smirked, adjusting his unkempt vest. "If you gentlemen will excuse me, it appears I have an empire to claim."

Trailed closely by his bodyguards, he pushed brusquely through the doorway, stepping without care over the soldier sprawled on the ground. The Duke could not conceal the spring in his step, bouncing down the hall with all the giddy excitement of a child about to open a new toy on his name-day.

Cullen reached out a hand to the guard at his feet, who looked up at him dubiously, but eventually accepted the help up. The pair of his remaining soldiers filed out of the room behind him, and the Commander fell in beside Dorian and Brand, one of his captains, who rattled through a status report as they went.

"Six of ours dead, sir. Twelve Imps. And a pair of lesser noblemen who got in the way, but the Ambassador says no great loss; shouldn't affect our relations here."

"Wounded?"

"Handful. None serious, though. Thing is, sir, they got the jump on us. One we had 'em pinned, there weren't much to 'em, Commander."

"Are we quite sure they're all accounted for?"

"It's Orlais, sir," Brand said, with a helpless shrug. "But, ah, the ballroom is secure," the captain added quickly, "and we got a sweep underway. If there's any more of 'em to be found, we'll find 'em."

Cullen shook his head, staying his irritation. He could not wait to put this place behind him. "That will be all, Captain."

Brand skipped ahead a few paces and turned to salute, then broke into a jog as he headed off to the front courtyard to join the patrol.

Cullen and Dorian continued on to the ballroom, which was teeming with revellers who danced and drank with merry apathy. It was stuffy and loud, stunk of powdered wigs and the odious clashing of all the various oils that the Orlesian aristocracy bathed in without restraint. Almost immediately, Cullen found himself swarmed, pinned down by the same group of insufferable sycophants who had clung to him all evening, all carrying on as if nothing had happened. They pawed at him with their grossly manicured hands, hands that had never seen a day of hardship in their lives but were none the less filthy with the stains of bloody deceit. He recoiled.

"Come dance, Commander!"

"Yes! You must! Beauty is wasted where no one can see it!"

He threw a pleading look to Dorian, whose reply was to bow with a flourish. "Do try to have some fun, Commander!" he said, and left. Grinning.

The Commander glared at the mage's back, the pounding in his temples renewed with vengeance. His admirers nattered, buzzing in his ear like mosquitoes only harder to swat away, following him each time he tried to free himself. A waiter passed with a tray of drinks, and he grabbed a glass and took a long, breathless drink. It was all he could do to choke down the vitriolic ripostes that threatened to vomit out of his mouth. The things he must endure in the name of diplomacy. This whole place made no sense to him at all.

A grand cheer erupted, then, as Gaspard entered the ballroom. The new Emperor threw his hands up in the air, soaking in his victory and adulation with ludicrous pomp. Platitudes and empty promises spilled from his lips, and the nobility gorged themselves readily on his gilded lies all swathed in wire and barbs that cut with the swallow.

An Empress lay dead, and the world danced on, unmoved. A new game had begun.

But all Cullen could focus on was the sight of the Inquisitor at his side. She was barely recognisable; not just the stately raiment or the elaborate braids in her hair, or the ruby red of her painted lips or the borrowed jewels that dripped from her fingers in an ostentatious showing of orchestrated affluence. There was a terrifying power about the way she moved, the way she stood, aloof and untouchable. A woman who needed nothing, who wanted for nothing; a woman wanted by all. All at once, his gut churned, and he became aware of the overly-sweet aftertaste of the brew he had just imbibed far too freely, felt it rising in the back of his throat.

He continued to watch, long after the address was over and the celebration resumed. Watched the way Gaspard touched her arm with gross familiarity as they talked. Watched how he hovered possessively, predatory, as if warning the hyenas off from his quarry. Watched as they flocked to her, as if she was a beacon, a dazzling light in a realm of living shadows. Watched the delicate curve of her blood red smile, and cold eyes that pitched sugared daggers with deadly precision. It was a captivating but frightening dance she performed, one of charm and wit, of slight and sleight-of-hand. Such practiced grace. Such self-possession. A ringing reminder of her noble birth, and of the shepherding touch of the Left Hand at her back. She seemed perfectly at home. And he never more distant from her.

But then from across the room he commanded her attention, and an affectionate spark from her golden blue stare ignited in him a roaring fire. She gifted him a furtive smile, and a rushing silence drowned out everything but the thunderous din of his quickening pulse. It was an intimate suggestion of the woman behind the masquerade, and he felt his own mask slipping carelessly away. All that remained was a familiar ache and a very real sensation of falling. Cullen broke first, looking away, laughing; a nervous twitch of a thing, uncontrolled, unexpected. Under his collar, his neck tingled, a rippling wave of hundred thousand hot little pinpricks flooding across his flesh.

By the time he looked back, she had disappeared, and reality hurried back in with the force of a body slamming into the ground. He did not excuse himself, was barely even aware that he was moving at all until one of the obsequious scavengers clutched at his arm. 'Commander? Where are you going, Commander?' He tore free and filled the grabby hand with his empty cup, then pushed off into the crowd.

The voices drew shriller as he put more distance behind him. It was the same primal instinct from before that drove him, a dire urge to protect her, only now he was unhindered. The Duke's base comments echoed through the dark spaces of his mind, tempting ancient anger to the fore. Florianne might be dead but she was no less in danger; the Inquisitor's danger was constant. He scanned the muted crowd for flashes of red. There was Cassandra, standing alone with a scowl even more severe than his own. And Josephine, ever the diplomat, hard at work among a large group of nobles. Dorian and Leliana danced together in the centre of the floor; wait, was she  _smiling_? Unsettling.

Turning in place, a frown crept over his features. No sign of the Inquisitor anywhere. Cullen sighed. All about him was just a sea of featureless faces, masks that could not hide duplicitous eyes that brimmed with contempt, or forked tongues that lashed out from behind fangs dripping venomous scorn. To think that six of his men had died tonight in the defence of this empire of deceivers. It felt like losing. It felt personal. But it was neither of those things, he reminded himself. It was just  _war_ , and many more would be lost for far less before it was over. War required a degree of ruthlessness. It required detachment; the gulf between  _want_  and  _need_  was necessarily unnavigable.

A gust of cool air washed over him, then. He tipped his head toward the open door, to the beckoning call of a billowing curtain, a siren song of sweet freedom from the oppressiveness of the room. And the splash of red behind it. He moved with haste, like a drowning man swimming for his life, lungs growing ever thirsty as he neared the surface until finally…

Relief.

Things, he realised, often looked different from afar. Her regal attire was not the picture of perfection it had seemed from the back of the room. It was tousled, and torn at the shoulder, splotched with dirt and grass stains, some others that were possibly blood. The braids in her hair were falling apart, a mess of untidy strands spilling down her neck and about her shoulders. She had since removed her gloves, stuffed them without care into her pocket and all the jewels along with. As he joined her at the balcony railing, he noticed a deep red smear on the back of her hand, alarming at first, until he realised that precisely matched the remnant colour at the edge of her naked lips.

"There you are," he said softly, smiling. And it  _was_  her; perfectly familiar, completely unmasked. This was the woman for whom his heart trembled, whom his arms yearned to hold, and for whom he forewent slept to spare her the menace of his haunted dreams. The woman from whom his fears kept him at arm's length. The woman who, when he looked at her, made it impossible to remember why he was fighting at all. Not when the prospect of losing this chance was far more terrifying than anything lurking in his past.

"I thought my mother was hard to please. She's positively delightful by comparison," she said; she sounded exhausted. "I couldn't stand another minute in there."

"Nor I," Cullen replied. "Are you all right?" It took a great deal of self-control not to reach out and untangle her hair from her collar.

Olivia tossed him a quick look that revealed little, followed by the slighest of shrugs. "Things are what they are. Gaspard will be trouble, I'm sure."

"You don't know the half of it," he said, more than a little bitterly. Cullen shook his head at her quizzical look.

With a sigh, she said, "I do seem to have a knack for making things as difficult as possible."

"Don't worry about Gaspard. For now, we need him. He stands the best chance of uniting the factions here in Orlais. And if he becomes a problem, we'll deal with him."

"As if it's just that easy. Alarming, really. To think that the Inquisition has that kind of power."

"Perhaps. But if anyone must, better that we have it than it fall to someone else." Cullen kicked at the stone railing, mulling. He knew he didn't need to say it. At least, he thought he knew. Maybe he didn't. Power made for strange bedfellows, after all; it was just the thing he could imagine Josephine and Leliana advocating. "Just, promise me you won't…" That prickling in his neck again; he scratched at it anxiously. "That you won't accept anything he might…offer."

"What do you mean?" She turned, bemused. "Are  _you_  all right?"

"Yes. Well…I mean, I am, it's just… Inqui—" Cullen exhaled a shaky breath. "Olivia…"

The way she smiled when he said her name, it made it hard to think. Palms sweating inside his gloves; hands shaking, but not in the usual way. He grabbed the railing tightly, not knowing what else to do with them, and felt suddenly as if he'd been in this position before. Things had not gotten easier with time. Music wafted on the night breeze, filling a silence that he seemingly could not. The quiet dragged on, grew more awkward, while his thoughts grew more jumbled, more panicked, and her bemusement sank into something more uneasy. Spiralling.

"I just…" he started, but had nothing to follow it. Had  _too much_  to follow it. Where even to begin? As was always the way when it came to her, he merely looked away, and shook his head in defeat.

"Cullen..."

He felt her arm slink under his, and he turned his head slowly, eyes fixed on his hand as she tugged at his glove, loosening digit by digit until with a final pull the whole thing tore off. Cold fingers laced between his and gently squeezed; fingers callused and worn, the nails dirty and ragged from weeks of battle.  _Her_  fingers, unmistakable. His own responded in kind, closing around her hand, which felt so small and strangely delicate in his grasp. So worth protecting. A tentative smile twitched at his lip. Her body was a precious warmth against his side; his timid heart a shiver in his chest. When finally he felt brave enough to look up, he tumbled head first into that shimmering clear lake of her eyes with no heed for his survival. It was only a sweet relief.

"I know," is all she said.


	10. Gathering

Every step was a struggle, on knees that ached and thighs that burned with the effort of pushing weary muscles through deep snow. And the weight. Not the weight of a woman, but the burden of a body; heavy in his arms and unwieldy, clinging to life by the barest of threads. Hard to hold, but harder not to, when the whole world's survival hinged on that of the Herald. She was awake just enough to writhe against him, to trash with the last of her energy, enough that he would lose his grip, have to stop and readjust to stop her slipping. Slipping away…

He did not know then what she would become. Not to the world, and not to him; he was still unclear on the last. Only that she was imperative. Only that she had stirred up something in him he thought long dead. She was dying in his arms, and it was bringing him back to life.

Almost three months had passed since that night, when she brought the wrath of the mountain down. Tonight she had spared them from it.

They were only a few hours from Skyhold when she had insisted they wait. Something to do with the birds and the cold; it made little sense to him, but she was adamant that they would not make it before the weather in the mountains turned. Better to camp and make the return push on the morrow. Grudgingly, in spite of clear skies and an impatience to be home, he had his men—the handful he had not left behind as a 'token of the Inquisition's commitment to the new crown'; sanctioned scouts—set a camp at the base of the mountains.

The storm broke just before sundown.

It built out of nothing, out of wisps and whispers in the highest crags of ice, twisting and turning into a roiling mantle of dense grey cloud that fell vengefully from the heavens as a blizzard that last for several hours. Nestled in the foothills, the inhospitable winter landscape offered a little protection from the icy wind that spilled down the mountain passes. It ripped at the tents with menace, and the trees groaned and swayed like an army of grey ghosts haunting the winter gloom, while they huddled in their shelters, waiting it out.

The tent he shared with Blackwall and Dorian, and the recruits Garrett and Vaughn, was cramped but warm, at least. While the other men passed the time with a flask and hands of cards, Cullen passed it laid out on a bedroll, drifting in and out a fitful sleep. It was a long time since he had been able to sleep comfortably in shared quarters. He feared what might come out of him, in the night, in the dark, when his guard was down and his control was gone. Whispers and the sidelong glances, alienation and rumour; such was the penance for a full night's sleep.

It was late when finally rose, when the wracking sound of the wind had tapered off and quiet descended over the camp. Dorian remained, now sprawled and snoring at the back of the tent; Blackwall and the recruits were gone. The snow had been kicked away from the tent flap, and tracks disappeared out into the forest. Similar tracks led out from three of the other tents. A half dozen of them must have taken to the watch, he guessed. Before he left, he stoked at the fire until it sparked back to life, and then fetched his sword and ventured out into the woods via unspoiled snow to join them.

There was an eeriness about the icy hush. Out here in the dark, outside the bounds of the campfire's reach, the world was so still, so empty. There was no sign of the turmoil that wracked the land, the dark and the cloud swallowing even the scar in the sky. And quiet; so much so he could almost hear each single snow flake as it hit the ground. Every now and then, a short, sharp whistle would puncture the silence, and five more just like it would echo after from somewhere out among the trees, and then fade back into nothing. In the spaces between those scout calls, he felt like the last man left alive.

The wind had dulled from a howl into a whimper. It slunk like an interloper, slithering in between the snow-dusted trees; it licked at his ears and down his neck, cold, like the breath of the Maker himself. Cullen dropped his chin to his chest, folded his arms and shrugged deeper into his furs, but refused to kowtow to the shiver that pricked at his spine. How he hated the cold, and the ache it inspired in his bones. It was a long time since he had spent so much time in the elements. As a child even a small trip had seemed a great adventure. Perhaps too many years in Circles had left him soft, or his years were catching up with him. A nomadic life like the one Blackwall led seemed the least appealing thing in the world, especially when it seemed he only ever moved from one battle on to the next with no reprieve.

It was still strange just being back in Ferelden again. Home, but not. Somehow right and wrong all at once and he was beginning to doubt it would ever feel any different. Nothing was as it used to be, not the country, not the man. Skyhold above him, Lake Calenhad beside him, Honnleath always at his back and there was he just standing in the centre, weathering the storm. And he was so tired of the storm. It wasn't enough to just keep on surviving anymore. For now he had the Inquisition, but was that all there was? If he was to finally be a free man, he did not want to squander that freedom, burning up in the flames of a battle he feared would not abate until there was nothing left of him.

There might not be, anyway, the way his tainted blood shredded through his veins. He was a long way from freedom.

Trapped in his thoughts and buried in his cloak, he did not hear her approach, but when he turned his head there she was, emerged out of the darkness as though she were made of it, so light of foot she barely left a trail behind her. With her bow strapped at her back and draped in leathers, cast in the steely light of winter, her silhouette took on a haunting air that evoked an ancient savagery. Other-worldly. And so she was, this woman who walked from the Fade; straight out of the realm of dreams. Was she even real at all? Was any of this? Sometimes it was hard to reconcile. Perhaps Cullen Rutherford was long dead and this life he lived was just his confused spirit echoing through the Fade. A grim thought.

"You're supposed to be asleep."

"I'm supposed to be a lot of things," she answered. There was a flavour of melancholy in almost everything she said, sometimes even when she laughed, that pained him. Like a too-clear reflection he did not wish to see. "I've heard it said that if you can't sleep at night, it's because you're awake in someone else's dreams." Olivia tilted her head toward him, and he saw the shadow of her brow arch. "Not yours, then."

"Not this time," he replied with a laugh. A hot blush bloomed in his cheeks.

"Dorian's, then."

Cullen shook his head. "I dare not guess at who it is keeping me awake."

"Also Dorian."

All he could muster was a nervous stammer as he tried to think of anything to say, but it was mercifully broken as another round of whistles broke the air. Only four answered. Cullen paused, listening a few moments longer, but nothing came. Likely he was too far to hear, he surmised; the sound caught and carried away on the wind, or they had been muddled together.

"So… We haven't talked since…"

"I know," he replied, following her voice back from distraction. The awkwardness of the last five days was not certainly lost on him. Trying to forget the feel of their fingers entwined, and overcompensating by barely looking at her at all, for fear someone would notice. Trying to pretend that nothing had changed; not even sure if anything  _had_. Part of the reason he was so anxious to be done with the travelling.

"I thought it best to wait, until we were back at Skyhold, and things had settled. But things are never settled. There's always… _something_. And this might be as much privacy as we're going to get."

He huffed out a laugh. "Clandestine talks in the wilderness, under cover of darkness? It's not  _exactly_  how I imagined… Not that I really 'imagined' anything. I haven't thought about it extensively, that is." Maker's  _breath_.

Olivia chuckled quietly. "I, on the other hand, have spent more time than I dare admit thinking about it. About what I should say to you, I mean; or what I want to say, because they aren't necessarily the same thing. And I just keep going around in circles, and it's exhausting." Even now she appeared to be struggling to put her thoughts in order. "The thing is, Cullen: I have always done the thing that was expected, or asked of me _._  That's how my father raised me and it's why I'm even here in the first place. Because Trevelyans...we serve.

"But I don't know what the Maker wants with me anymore. I think maybe I never did." Olivia kicked idly at the snow as she spoke. "I feel as if I am adrift at sea with no stars to guide me. I have a strong idea of where I'm going now, and where I need to be. I didn't before, but I'm getting there. But then, there you are, like some light on the shore, and I feel drawn to you. But it's frightening, because this is land I have never tread before." She sighed in defeat. "I told you I'd spent too much time thinking about this."

The gravity in her tone was too great a pressure upon his chest for his own voice to rise against, so Cullen stood mute, parsing every word for all potential meaning. It sounded less an admission, and more an apology; he felt suddenly as though he was sinking.

"As Inquisitor, the  _right_  thing to do would be to put my feelings aside, and just stay the course. That's what expected. B—"

"Because you serve," he finished for her, a little sourly. Though his argumentative heart begged to be heard, instead he nodded, or shrugged; too numb to really know which. It didn't matter; she was right, and he had always known it. A fool part of him dared to hope that things might be different now, but though he had changed and the world along with him, the one thing that remained constant was the pull of obligation.

"Yes. But Cullen—"

The pierce of a whistle punctuated her thought, long and clear and wild; a distinct warning, originating somewhere to the southeast, where the Imperial Highway cut into the mountains. A gurgling yell followed soon after, high of pitch and wet with anguish.

She had already begun to move, but the Commander snapped an arm out and grabbed her by the hand, pulled her back. "No. Get back to camp. Wake the others and wait there.  _Wait,_ " he ordered, and took off running before she had time to argue.

War was his obligation, and it seemed the only thing of hers that he need carry anymore.


	11. Storming

Each breath was a murder in his lungs.

The thick blanket of white disguised a hellish terrain, jagged and uneven. Cullen sensed more than saw where he was running, navigating between shadows with an urgency that blinded him as surely as any darkness. His heedless feet carried him with abandon over felled dead trees and snow-covered shelves of rock that under normal circumstances he would have negotiated with delicacy rather than haste. But there was no time for caution. No time to stop or think. No time for the winter air stabbing at his chest, or the throb in his head or the ache in the legs. No time for the abject fear that always accompanied him into battle.

They were out there.

He felt them, even if he couldn't see them. Felt the hot riot in his veins, the prick of the hairs on his neck. In the back of his mind was a quiet chant, all wrong; a song sung out of tune, one sour note heaped upon another, and severe, like the clash of metal against teeth. Shivers down his spine. The taste of rust, the despair of something pure fallen into ruin.

"W-we're no mages! Please! We're with the Inquisition!" It came, carried on the night air from somewhere near to the south. Vaughn's voice, he thought.

Cullen pulled his sword from its sheath.

Nearer and nearer, louder and louder the chant became; somewhere underneath it all came Blackwall's guttural yell, indiscernible, just a bated baritone amid the cacophony. All else fell out of focus, muted against the drumming of his blood song, a rhythm of war out of step with the rest of the world. Darting between trees to the beat of that discordant tune, at last he came upon them. Blackwall and Vaughn; the shape of another lay on the ground behind them. Between Cullen and his comrades  _they_  stood, six of them in total; three in scout trappings, three in knight's regalia. A typical hunting party. But this was no righteous pursuit. This was something else, predatory and wrong; sport hunting. They circled now like rabid dogs closing in around a wounded prey with gnashing teeth, hungry.

"And you shall die with them."

Violence erupted into the night.

Where Blackwall fought with caution and determination, Vaughn battled like some mountain savage, frantic and uncontained. The recruit stumbled about as if drunk, broadsword swinging wildly, each slice punctuated by a grunt of dire effort. It was fortune rather than any inkling of finesse that the tip of his blade bit into the window of exposed flesh at a scout's neck. The scout made desperate swings of his own, staggering about with one hand pressed against the wound, panicked as life ebbed out of him.

"Don't waste your time on that one! Here!" Blackwall yelled, throwing his shield up as the spiked head of a knight's club smashed down upon him.

"Right...yes, right!" Vaughn kicked the doubled-over scout in the face, sent him flailing backward, then leapt into the fray.

This was not what was intended. This was not what they were for.

They had not seen him, did not feel or hear him, the screaming from their muddy crimson depths too loud, too much. Cullen's rage was quiet, controlled, burning blue and clear and pure. Composed. It was singular and complete, a liquid fire seeping into the cracks, annihilating the fear and the doubt and the hesitation. In those spaces it hardened into an unbreakable shell of righteousness, and he was whole. Fury was his  _purpose_. It was the Maker's hand at his back, Andraste's sword in his hand.

_Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked…_

He glided swiftly, silently, seething with every step until he was near enough to pounce. He flung an arm around the neck of one of the knights and yanked him backwards. The attack was too sudden for the templar to even alarm. Finding the edge of the hauberk with the tip of his blade, Cullen drove his sword forcefully forward. It slipped in with terrible ease to sever the knight's spine. Now he yelled; twitched and flailed and screamed as his legs fell out from under him. The Commander went to the ground with him, twisting the blade with a visceral crunch, steel grinding against bone, grinding against steel.

"Rest at the Maker's right hand, brother, and be forgiven," Cullen whispered against the templar's ear. Sorrow stung like sickness on his tongue as he pulled his blade free.

Another knight, the largest of the bunch, broke off from the pack and stalked toward him now. Cullen was halfway to his feet when the broad face of a kite shield slammed into him, throwing him clear across the field. Dazed, his whole side tingling from the blow, Cullen scrambled backward while he gathered his senses. He braced against a tree as he hauled his body up.

The silhouette that towered over him was all wrong, oddly lanky and deformed, stretched out like a low winter shadow. When it breathed, it was more a snarl, gravelly and untamed. Even so, it moved with a hint of chilling familiarity. This was not just any shadow, but Cullen's shadow; a nightmare version of himself, stripped of its humanity and instilled with purpose most terrible: death. Only death. From out of the gash in the helmet, the knight's eyes shone a vicious red. The red lyrium blood hungered for more.

_Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just…_

The corrupt templar struck out with raw menace and power, and Cullen had never so wanted for his shield. Without it, he could only dodge and weave around the knight's freakish reach, waiting for some opening to strike back. The swings he could not avoid, he parried or deflected the best he could. One nicked at his ear and stung keenly in the cold winter air; a hot flow of blood down his neck. Another strike came after, and another and another, a vicious string of attacks that had him staggering about hopelessly. Cullen grabbed hold of his sword halfway up the blade so that he might better defend. His arms trembled under the force of each blow, rattling down to the bone, resonant through his shoulders, his spine, his hips.

"I will not fear death," he murmured between panting breaths, "for the Maker shall be my shield…"

But the dance was exhausting. The run from camp was catching him up, the cold and the bitter wind. The throbbing at his ear, the fatigue in his limbs. The snow made it that much harder to move, made him sluggish and clumsy. His mind wandered, his focus faded with his strength. He could not go on like this indefinitely. The knight seemed unfazed, savagery unchecked by human margins. Relentless. He did not care about finesse or precision, did not need any technique. Such power…such speed. Chipping. Just chipping away, wearing Cullen down. It was working.

The templar drew back for another swing, arm high and wide, and at last, Cullen saw a chance. He thrust forward with a mighty roar, driving into the opening in the knight's defences. The blade caught under the plates of his enemy's faulds and cut deep, through to the bone of the hip. Growling with an adrenal ferocity of his own, again Cullen turned the blade, pushing and mincing the flesh within. The knight howled and blundered backwards off the blade.

It was a short reprieve.

Only a moment later he was back again, one contorted leg dragging behind, but otherwise unabated. The sword sung through the air down over Cullen's head, and instinctually he threw up his left arm to block.

_No shield_.

The edge slammed down hard against Cullen's plate vambrace. The armour prevented the cut, but the force, _Maker_ , the power of the blow! Too much. The bone beneath shattered. A primal wail escaped his lips, agony exploding through his limb.

"Commander!" he heard Blackwall yelling. He could not reply. Couldn't think, couldn't feel anything but the crushing torment in the arm that hung now useless at his side.

He stumbled about, pain-blind, scrambling to get away. But there was nowhere to escape to.  _I will not fear death._ He was too tired, too slow.  _I will not fear._ Not just his arm, but his whole body. Useless.  _I will not…_ But he did. He did fear. Cullen lurched against a tree, wheezing and gasping. After everything he had endured in Kinloch, in Kirkwall, after a hole in the blasted sky,  _this_  was how he died. After a lifetime lived at the precipice of death, this was where he fell: in the dark, on the doorstep of his home, at the hand of his own kind. The Maker had a sense of humour, after all.

"Though the darkness come…comes upon me…" he gasped. The knight kept coming, slow and shambling now with his limp, but still he came. Came to finish what he had begun. "I shall embrace the light…" Cullen swallowed, hard. That snarling grew louder with each awkward stride the knight took toward him. "I shall…w-weather…the storm…" The storm.

_Olivia_ …

Grief flooded through his chest; sickness bloomed in his gut.

"I shall…weather the storm," he said again, firmer. "I shall…I shall endure."

Less than three paces away. The red knight threw back his sword.

Cullen pushed himself up, stood tall. Anger boiled through his veins.

A banshee howl rung out into the night. The blade hummed as it cut through the air, high. It sang the song that would end his life— _shing-shing-shing_ ; a cruel pitch that thirsted for the flesh of his neck. The world seemed to slow down for a moment, everything pause except for the whirring ballad of that rime-covered blade.

As it crossed his shoulder, Cullen reeled backward and dropped to his knees. The tip of the blade grazed his brow as it passed, then collided forcefully and sunk deep into the tree trunk. Shards of bark and a flurry of snow shaken loose from the canopy showered down over him.

_I shall endure_.

He jammed his eyes closed before they filled with blood, and in the darkness, in the deep, in the seat of his soul that bright blue flame reignited. "I shall endure." Hotter and hotter it burned, licked at his insides, consuming the darkness, feeding on hate and feasting on his fear. "I shall endure!" Cullen yelled.

There was a blinding flash before him, a rush of searing heat. Musk of wet earth, a shrieking cry of torment. The sour smell of spoiled meat.

Just as quickly as it came, it was gone, and all his strength along with it. As he fell backward on his heels, woozy, he at last opened his eyes. The templar stood doubled over amid a circle of melted snow and smouldering earth. Shield abandoned, helmet torn off and discarded; the skirts of his cassock still burned against blackened steel. And the screaming…an ear-splitting wail, almost demonic. Through bleary eyes that stung with gore, Cullen witnessed the true extent of the knight's disfigurement. The sagging jaw misshapen by a dozen tumorous growths, all glowing and pulsing red. Lips long since torn away to leave a blood-stained grin of a most horrific permanence. Now, the flesh of his scalp too had become a nightmarish landscape of molten flesh that trailed down his face.

"Touch me with fire, that I be cleansed," Cullen mumbled, dizzy, barely able to remain upright.

It grew quieter. The yelling of men, the screaming of steel, it all fell away, and so did he, backward into the snow. Cold. His arm hurt. His head, too. Blood in his eyes. The sky above was beginning to clear, shards of moonlight and the faint green echo of the Fade tear peeking through the breaks in the cloud. Everything was scarred. The trees by winter, the ground by fire. His face by steel, the sky by hubris. Nothing would ever be whole again, he thought. Certainly not him. There was nothing left to fill the cracks. Broken he would die.

The shambling, shuffling sound of armour approaching. The savage, throaty growling of a creature no longer man, but somehow so much more. All that Cullen had to give was not enough to stop what was coming. The shadow loomed over him, collapsed with all its weight upon his legs, some three hundred pounds of monster and metal. A charred and twisted hand grabbed Cullen by the throat and yanked him up. Too-long fingers like spiders' legs all wrapped around his neck. Twitching, pressing, choking. And the smell. This was what death smelled like; like acrid smoke and damp earth, like burnt hair and spoiled meat.

A fist of deformed tendrils, hard as stone, slammed into his cheek. Cullen had no room left for fresh pain.

"Tell me I have sung to Your approval," he whispered at the sky; pleaded, gagged. He grunted as another punch came. "Seat me by Your side in death."

His mind strayed then, as it always did when he was at his weakest. Straight to her. "You are the fire at the heart of the world." Stars bloomed across his vision, darkening with another punch. He wasn't sure that his words were even reaching his throat anymore. Just gurgling sounds. "Comfort only…only…yours…"

He waited for the next hit, the one that would be the last. But there came instead a quiet whistling over his head. A whirring, a whisper. A sodden thud, then two more after it.  _Thwomp. Thwomp-thwomp_.

A strike that never came. Fingers uncoiled from around his throat. The templar's body slumped forward and over onto the ground. Cullen fell back. Free. Falling. Sinking. The sky was so far away. The dark so near. So full of stars.

"Help the others! Go!"

Hollow. Muted. Like voices in a hallway; people yelling in the next room. What room was this? Cold. Hard. Hard to think. Hard to see. Swelling and blood. He tried to blink; only one eye worked. Something was wrong. Shuddering, hissing, snarling. The gnashing of nightmare teeth. Red. All red. Was this him?

"Cullen!"

Boots. Close. She yanked the monster away. Slit the throat. Blood steaming in the snow. Savage. Strong.

"Oh, Cullen…"

Here. Beside him. Fingers in his hair. The storm and its centre. Wild and calm. Such lovely sorrow. His most beautiful lament.

"Li…" Bubbles of blood. "Liv…" His hand floated up. Fingers on her face. It hurt to smile. It hurt her too. "We sh…should have…"

"Shh, Cullen. Don't. Help is coming." Yelling. Frantic. Scared.

Tired. So tired. His hand fell away. "...danced."

Dark.


	12. Slipping

  
"Stupid bullshit mountains."

Varric stuffed his hands under his armpits, shrugged down into his collar and bounced up and down in place until he thought his old bones might shake right out of him. He forced his mind toward comforting thoughts: the Hanged Man and its warm smell of stale piss; the hot cuts of Norah's acerbic tongue; drinks and cards with good friends; the sensuous rattle of a laden purse. None of it helped. If anything, now he was just freezing  _and_  miserable. He reached instead into his coat for the skin of whiskey at his breast, pulled it out and took a long swig. At least his insides could be warm.

"Well, of course, Seeker; it would be my  _pleasure_  to accompany you. How gracious of you to ask," he muttered sourly, wiping a dribble of amber from his chin. "No Seeker, nothing would give me greater joy than to eke out my remaining days ass-deep in ice and demon shit. You  _honour_  me."

Though, he could hardly blame her  _entirely_  for that last part.

Demons and darkspawn and weird lights in the sky and crazy mages and templars breaking fast on chunks of red lyrium; pick any two and it was home. But all of them at once? He'd always heard Fereldens didn't do anything by half, but this was ridiculous. Next time the world decided it had to end, couldn't it pick some place a little more hospitable? Like Antiva?

But the irony wasn't at all lost on him. It  _had_  to be here, of all places, didn't it? The stone remembered what it was owed. A debt of Tethras blood remained on the ledger, and he was the only one left to pay. But that was a life  _Varric_  Tethras had never known or loved, not lost nor pined for. Everything he had and was he owed to having been banished from that birthright. Why was he being punished? For not sitting around weeping for a life he had never wanted? For enjoying his life of excess and the freedoms afforded him by the dishonour of his ancestors? It wasn't  _his_  shame; why should he carry it?

Varric sighed and took another drink. It was hard not to be bitter. But that was the kind of thinking that made people set their faith on fire, and that was not a bridge he was quite ready to burn, not while the Inquisitor remained on the deck. Then again, she may just kill him before he got a chance to strike the flint. Or Cassandra would. No, Cassandra  _definitely_ would. And that was as good a reason as any to just keep drinking. Not that he was shy of reasons.

A steady trickle of Inquisition troops slipped down the pass, ignoring him for the most part. Curt nods, the odd frown, but no questions. Far as they were concerned, he was just another dwarf on a mountain, and they had bigger concerns. Soon as the storm had passed, they were out with their shovels and axes, clearing the road. Tireless, and just a bit inspiring. A whole army of little toy soldiers, each of them wound just a little bit too tight. But of course they would be, under Curly's command.

Now, there was a man who could use a skin, or five. Among other things. The stories that must be locked up inside that head of his… No one was that obsessed by accident. You see a man with such a resolute gaze, you have wonder what it is he's trying so hard  _not_  to look at.

Varric hiccupped, the contents of his stomach lurching up into his throat, vile and hot, but he choked it back down and followed it with a mouthful of fresh stuff. Where the first two-thirds of the skin did not even make a dent in the fount of his sobriety, the third stampeded over him like a herd of wild druffalo. A giddy amber haze took hold of his senses. Light of head and heavy of foot, he swayed gently, barely pushing back against the wind at his heel. Tired. How damned long had he been out here now? 'Meet me tonight', the note said. Well, 'tonight' was too open a window and it was letting all the sleep out. Sleep. Ugh, that sounded perfect. In a soft bed, nice and warm. If a little empty.

 _Shit_. This is why you should never drink alone.

Through weighted lids and wispy snow, the whiskey haze and a fog of unwelcome ghosts, he just barely observed a figure rising on the road below. It took a minute for his swimming brain to catch up, but as soon as it did, he snapped alert. Even deeply shrouded in hooded robes, her shape was unmistakable. The way she moved, her every step heavy with grim purpose, he'd know it anywhere. But he couldn't ignore how each time they met, she seemed a little closer to the ground.

Varric squeezed the last few drops out of the skin before stuffing it back into his pocket, then smoothed out the front of his coat. "Waffles," he said, warmly and with open arms, tongue tripping into a slur at the end.

Whether exhaustion or just relief, she fell fiercely to her knees and into his hold, with nary a sneer at the nickname she usually grumbled at. Arms wrapped around bodies, but hers felt thin and sharp, all hard angles of bone. Frail, even; though that was belied by the tightness of her embrace. Her cheek, like raw ice, burned against his neck, while her breath was a hot, frantic pant.

"Hey, come on now; Bianca will get jealous," he said, reaching behind to unhook her arms. It took some doing.

Hawke fell back on her heels, lungs struggling to catch up with her erratic breath. The way she fidgeted, looking frequently over her shoulder and rocking in place, it was clear she was anything but at ease. And her face told a tale more vivid than any story he could have devised. The wan moonlight cast the hollows of her cheeks in shadows dark and deep, eyes dusky with distress. Wind and snow had ravaged her skin, left it raw and peeling, cracked all about her pale lips, stained an icy hue. Straggly clumps of unkempt red hair spilled out from under the tattered hem of the filthy, frost-beaten hood.

Sure as Andraste's searing ass was he sober now.

"Can we go?" she asked thinly, but agitated. Anxious.  _Scared_. Always checking behind her, and now shaking in the grip of idle cold. "We need to go. They're coming."

"What? Who? Who's coming?"

Hawke's head snapped back around, the shining whites of her widening eyes consuming the encircling shadows. In her lap lay wringing hands, fingers tugging fretfully at one another with the dreadful, screaming sorrow of bones too weary for the world. "Please? Now."

Varric frowned and pulled the edge of her cloak closed around her tiny frame. It had been too long. He'd left her alone out there for too long. But she hadn't been alone, and maybe that was the real problem. Sometimes no company was better. He should have been more mindful of the state of his house.

"Sure," he said sadly, holding her hand as she scrambled to her feet.

Because that's the thing: you don't keep you house in order, and sooner or later, stuff just starts to slip through the cracks.


	13. Breaking

In the last throes of her eleventh winter, her scant possessions were packed into a trunk and loaded into the back of the wagon amongst stacks of pelts destined for market. It was a year since her last hunt, and much had changed since that day in the forest, but not her fate. The morning was hushed and cool, one of those odd between-season days that was almost too warm for a heavy coat, but too cold to go at length without. Under a dusky sky, she stood at the manor gate, watchful that the quiver in her lip did not ripen into tears, with her goodbyes to her father and her sisters lingering in the air like wintry ghosts. Father was quieter than usual, barely looked at her even as he lifted her up onto the seat beside Warner.

"Be good," he commanded. Then he nodded to her brother, and that was that.

Her new life began with a shake of reins, with the cluck of Warner's tongue and the groan of wooden wheels rumbling to action. Olivia turned and watched the distance open in their wake. Tillie chased Lydia about the yard, trying to catch her by the hair ribbons, the two of them screaming and giggling like fools. Father stood with a hand on the gate, motionless for as long as she watched back. He grew smaller and smaller, the sharpness of his features blurring into vaguer shapes; her sisters' voices faded on the cool air. Despite her young years, Olivia understood with alarming clarity that this was an ending; the close of a chapter, and nothing would be the same again. But she did not cry.

The Revered Mother was an odd woman, given to bouts of wild ranting and nonsense, which was frightening, but everyone said she would be retired soon, whatever that meant. The Sisters and lay sisters were all kind and patient with her as she settled in—though many became less so as she got older. No one seemed to know for sure what to do with a little girl who would take no vows. Olivia was adamant that she would not do or say anything that might trap her here forever, and it was decided she would be a disruption to the cloistered initiates. They put her up in a tiny storeroom at the back of the chantry building, stowed in a closet like a blanket, except that she was trotted out every morning and put away at night. It was not as terrible as she had convinced herself it would be. She even had a small window that faced the ocean. One day she would be tall enough to look out of it.

Mornings in the chantry were for the Maker, and then chores until lunch. Afternoons were for general studies; history and arithmetic, grammar and rhetoric, logic and philosophy, herbalism and 'miscellany'. Different Sisters favoured each, and the results were mixed. Arithmetic with Sister Bertie was  _painful._ The sister was always  _chewing_  on something; usually anise root. To ward off consumption, she said. Olivia supposed it worked, since Sister Bertie never seemed to get sick, but it left her with breath that could peel the paint from a chasind's hide.

The best part of the day was the hour or so between when class ended and supper was served, and Olivia was free to do as she wished. For the first few weeks, that meant sitting quietly in her room reading or drawing or writing letters home. Once the worst of the pining had faded and she resigned to her new arrangement, she started to venture out. First to the nave for a week or two to test her bravery, then a little further to the atrium, and eventually, out into the summery gardens.

As the sun set on a long day of intense study, Olivia sat quietly reading when suddenly a dozen or more children spilled into the common. She could barely believe her eyes, and nor could they it seemed, as everyone froze at the sight of one another. Other children! Olivia knew about the monastery but it had been strongly implied that she should mind her business and not go nosing about behind the Chantry. And she  _had_  only been minding her business; they had found her! After that brief moment of cautious confusion and a flurry of introductions, they all fell in together as though they had known each other all their lives.

They were boys, mostly, but she did not mind, having spent a deal of time around Ser Leith's sons. Plus it made her somewhat of a popular novelty. Olivia's actual brothers were all much older, already grown up, with their own lives and responsibilities, and her sisters bent to their mother's whims; it was nice to be the centre of attention for a change. All at once, her small life of solitude and isolation did not seem so small. It was as if she had dozens of brothers, and they would play games of chase and hide-and-seek, tell tall tales and sing silly songs until the bells rang and called the day to a close.

The years rolled on. As Olivia got older, the Sisters went to great lengths to occupy her days. It seemed her presence and the relative freedom afforded by her stubborn independence made them nervous. Time once given freely now need be stolen. It was different though. The days of frivolous games were over. Somewhere along the way they had all grown so serious and thoughtful and argumentative and reserved. A few bonds strengthened, but most began to tatter and fray. The recruits moved on.

For every young man who left the monastery, another child joined the ranks; an endless cycle. Olivia stood still at the centre of all this change, like a statue against the rise and fall of the seasons, feeling the effects but powerless to react. For all her faith and all her study, all her diligence and obedience, the day the last of her childhood friends left for his assignment she felt an emptiness inside of her like a great echoing chamber, filled with the fading laughter of children at play.

A decade later, she was still standing in that same place. No vows bound her, but Olivia had nowhere else to go, no one else to be. Not a sister of any kind except in spirit, she continued to watch over the recruits with familial affection. If she was not too busy with her own work, she would read with them, play games and help them with their studies. They appreciated her ease, the way she did not preach at them, scold or disparage them. It was fulfilling in a way that the frequent tedium of her work could never match. Some mornings she would arrive at her desk in the library to find it adorned with flowers from the garden. They were seldom brave enough to own to the trespass, but she could usually identify the culprit from the unbridled blushing.

These were not monsters or murderers.

It was impossible not to think of them now. Dozens of faces drifting through her mind, blending into one another, with names she could not remember and others she would never forget. Memories from a life that seemed further and further away all the time, more and more foreign and belonging to someone else. It made her heart ache to think of what had become of all those boys, and how she could have— _should_  have—done more to save them. What if she had gone to the Redoubt instead? Left the mages to their lot and saved what remained of the Order? Would any of this have happened?

She was torturing herself. The past was best left there, she knew that. It could be mourned, but not changed. They were lost now, lost to time, lost to fate. It was too late to save them all.

Olivia only hoped that it was not too late to save  _one_.

Dawn broke, washing the sky in a sheet of greyish pink light. She had always thought it an odd turn of phrase. As if daylight was some usurper, come to tear the night all to pieces. It made no sense to her. Day was warm and bright and it empowered life, made flowers grow, made seas sparkle—if anything, night was the tyrant, the ruiner, the breaker of things. People fled to their homes and their beds, just to escape it. So it should have been a relief to her, finally to be able to put this night behind them. Instead, as the sun's early rays spilled through the ruptures in the cloud, there was no warmth and in the brightness all the horrors of the night could be seen with greater clarity, and all the questions that went along with could no longer be avoided. The day did not break. It was broken.

The wagon rocked, rumbled up the uneven passes as fast as the driver dare push the beasts up front. It would never be fast enough. Every jarring bump beneath her rattled through her rump, her back, knocked her teeth together. It was cramped and uncomfortable, and loaded with far too many bodies. She wanted to yell, to scream, to howl. She wanted to thrash and buck and rear up. She wanted to lash out at the sky, to scold it for its mocking light, for the storm that had stranded them. She wanted to cry out in challenge to the Maker himself, and make Him answer for all He had wrought. Nothing good had come out of that sky. But Olivia's limbs and voice were long numb. She said nothing, did nothing but stare at the vaguely human-shaped sacks on the floor of the wagon. Two more names she could not remember.

No one had spoken for a long time. Blackwall sat at her right, and like her, was neither asleep nor present, but in some other place in between, trapped in his own head. At the far end, an exhausted Dorian bobbed about in patchy sleep. Occasionally he would wake with a gasp, grasp about for his bearings, then sigh and fall back into it. Next to him, the lad Vaughn sat weeping, knees hugged tight to his chest and head buried between. He had wept for so long that he was left with only shaking sobs, no less wrenching for their hush.

The most resounding silence was at her left, the crushing weight slumped against her. Unconscious ever since she found him, his head lolled upon her shoulder so that she had to tense her pinned arm into a painful angle to keep him from falling. But Olivia did not want to be the one to move, despite the stabbing ache in her neck and the tingling in her fingers. He would wake. He  _had to_. Until then she sat, waiting and hoping, trying to ignore the scents of sweat and blood and smoke, of herbal salves and cotton gauze. She dared not let her gaze catch upon the violent red flowers blooming upon his bandages, or the alarming dents and gouges in his armour. As if ignorance and forgetting could make him whole.

But she was a prisoner of memory.

Over, and over, and over it churned out piecemeal agony. That moment the air grew warm and thick, sulphurous, before the column of fire fell from the heavens and lit up the forest in a blinding flash. That screaming wail that followed…a sound at once foreign and familiar, that bit at the tip of her tongue like the words to a forgotten song. The outline of that  _thing_  on top of him, all twisted and smouldering. She couldn't keep her hands still, couldn't stop the arrow from trembling, couldn't see through the tears of fright. Matched, then, by the terror in her guts when the first arrow missed its mark, and then the second after it. A deer would have spooked and bolted. But that thing…that  _monster_ , it was so focused it didn't even notice. All it wanted and all it felt was the singular need to destroy.

She pushed away her panic, forced her hands to quiet. Three arrows betwixt her fingers, another nocked the moment the one before it loosed. Strike after strike after strike, at last, and the thing keeled over while she reached for more arrows. Father would have been disgusted. That was not how he had taught her.  _Don't be rash, Livvy_ , he would say.  _A winning shot is a gift from the Maker, and the bounty His reward for your dedication. Trust in His guidance, and one is all you need_. There was no telling how many more she might have sent. As many as it took, she supposed.

And then his face… So beaten and bloodied and swollen he was a stranger except in fragments. The scar at his angry lip. Blonde curls in the snow, matted with gore. The rest a mosaic of suffering, a man painted in abstraction, in the livid colours of battle.

_We should have danced…_

She had watched Dorian work the wounds, hands ablaze with light. Watched the magical filaments flow out of him, and Cullen's flesh pull and tug together on invisible strings. Then she'd watched them break and fray and unravel, his flesh relax back into entropy as the blood rejected it. Even for all his Maker-given power, his 'gifts', Dorian had proved useless in knitting Cullen—a man who had dedicated his life in service to the Maker—back together. What hope did Olivia have with facile prayers and herbal liniments? What was it Cassandra was fond of saying? 'The Maker has a plan, but he is not always kind.' Could it be that nothing she did mattered? That things would simply be as they would, and Cullen would live or he would die, regardless of how she fought to save him? If that's all there was, then  _any_  kindness would be a welcome change.

Like a lute torn from its strings, she was so hollow and so useless. The needling pulse of the mark in her hand was a reminder of her futility. She could command, control, contort the very fabric of the Fade, but was powerless to stop a man from crossing it. If he lived there would be fresh scars to remind her of the Maker's benevolence. Of how His arbitrary will should be  _feared._  And she had never known a fear like this before. This was the sucking, draining dread of losing something precious and irreplaceable; a horror so complete she could almost feel it inside of her, wicking her away. And she was alone in it. Completely, utterly, terrifyingly alone.

The whispers had started before they even left camp. Swirling like a foul mist, like a dozen fingers in her mouth, torqueing and twisting as they ripped her apart for an answer she refused to surrender.  _What if he doesn't wake? Who will replace him?_ Cassandra, they figured. Until Rylen could be called back. Olivia did not even know who Rylen was outside of a name at the bottom of a status report. The Inquisition was so much larger than any one person anymore. A raging flood whose momentum could not be halted, anything it could not swallow up it would simply rush around. The only piece of the chain that could not be replaced was Olivia herself. The anchor, dragging on the bottom, gathering debris but unable to stop anything.

She was glad now to have a mountain between her and their heartless whispers, but it would start again with vengeance once they reached Skyhold. Who knew what else awaited her there after two weeks away. It didn't bear thinking about.

Blackwall stirred suddenly at her side, rummaging in his pack a moment before producing a chunk of bread, which he then tore in two. He held the larger of the pieces out toward her. Olivia shook her head and pulled away.

"You won't sleep, I get that. But starving won't help anyone, or get us there any faster."

Clear that he would not relent, Olivia sighed and took the bread from his hand. Blackwall bit ardently into his piece as he settled back against the wall of the wagon, but she could feel his sidelong stare upon her as he chewed. Waiting. With a half-roll of her eyes, she lifted the bread to her lips and took a nibbling bite as a concession. The crumbs melted on her tongue, and her stomach erupted with gluttonous growls. With everything else, her apparent hunger had been the furthest thing from her mind.

"Thank you," she said, muffled by a proper mouthful. Stale bread seemed suddenly a treat.

Blackwall nodded, satisfied. He yawned then, then threw his head back and closed his eyes. "Bad fucking luck," he grumbled wearily. Of all of them, Blackwall had come out of the woods in the best shape, with only cuts—admittedly deep, but not threatening—and bruises and a tender shield arm that would haunt him for a week or two.

"They grow more monstrous as this goes on," Olivia mumbled, swallowing.

"True enough. And I still don't understand it. Never will."

Olivia suppressed the urge to shrug. "Some follow this Samson character for power. Most, I expect, follow for lack of power, not want of it."

"You mean they have no choice? No. That's a sorry excuse. A man always has a choice."

It angered her, such a cavalier dismissal. As if all things fell down on one side of the blade or the other, but not all cuts were made even. What did Blackwall know of anything? What did Blackwall know of brotherhood?

"I suppose it must seem that way to a man who serves his order in the most minimal way, through self-imposed isolation," she said, demonstrating the sharper edge of her tongue. "I do not excuse what they have become. But I understand why some follow. If all you had ever known fell suddenly into chaos, would you not believe  _any_  promise that might make you whole again?"

Olivia's insides churned. Any one of those  _things_  could be a former familiar face. A friend. A brother. They were all men once, each one as fallible and as prone as the next. For better or for worse, they served devotedly, held aloft by their divine purpose. Ruled by the very thing that made them what they were. Stripped of their pennons, what choice had they but to fall?

"I pity them," she added, her sadness ebbing in her throat. "Would that more of them had the strength to stand up for themselves, much less for anyone else. Would that more of them were like Cullen. Or even like you."

Blackwall said nothing more.

The last stippling of the treeline had long given over to sheer walls of wretched grey rock. They were perhaps an hour from home, she guessed. Too long. As they continued up it grew noticeably colder, the mountain air thinner, and Cullen's breathing became more erratic, a weak wheezing rattle in the depths of his throat. As she listened to it in the sudden silence, it all hit her all at once. Bitter, medicinal smell of herbs. Lingering pangs of hunger. The brush of fingers upon her cheek. Metal jabbing into her side. Dark red blooms amid the white, like funerary flowers. Nervous laughter and stolen smiles. Fresh tears in her eyes. Paddling madly towards the light on the shore, begging it not to go out. There had already been too many endings.

"Hold on," she said in whispered plea, resting her head against his. "We're almost there."

_Maker, please. Please just give him back._


	14. Luring

To hear the tales tell it, she was a woman possessed. Neither of undue influence, nor by some rapacious being from the unknown beyond, but rather of a peerless beauty and a valorous spirit most unbreakable. A silver tongue to match her golden heart, she was a woman as caressed by providence as she was touched by tragedy, but the tragedy only accentuated her inherent  _goodness_. A diplomat, a scholar, a defender, tireless in her dedication to right over wrong. She stood fast and loyal against devastating odds and egregious injustices, and strode fearlessly into battle even as the earth and sky fell down all around her and darkness loomed ready to consume all that remained. A true  _champion._

But honest seeds rarely yielded honest fruit. With enough bullshit, anyone could grow peaches out of lemon pips.

Varric had warned her that their guest was 'out of sorts', and suggested she set her expectations 'a little lower'. Tired from travel, irritated, she figured; that was to be expected. But the dwarf's skill for exaggeration was bewildering.

The bedraggled Champion sat on the floor amid a pile of rags and rubble, withdrawn deep into the hood of a cloak that stunk to high heaven of mud and Maker-knew-what else. Five empty bowls lay about her, dried remnants of gravy clinging to their insides, a match for the stains on her fingers and sleeves. A pristine spoon sat half-buried in her squalor, and a basin of water with a wash cloth nearby, similarly untouched. Nervous energy radiated out of her, infectious, poisoning the air with disquiet as she rocked, fidgeted, fiddled. Even with her back to the wall at the corner of the room, she looked frequently over her shoulder. An unbreakable habit; a survival skill. Tugging constantly at her fingers, the knuckles cracked and popped in grizzly melody. Her story flooded from her mouth as a babbling stream, a mess of words stumbling and stuttering over a tongue as ungainly as if it were made of stones.

Try though she might, even Olivia's most convincing façade of concentration could not make it so. Tired, hungry, agitated; she contained it better, but her own mind mirrored the Champion's unease, scurrying about like a swarm of spiders whose webs snared and entombed her vagrant thoughts. Only key words from Hawke's account broke through: red lyrium; Templars; Wardens. Corypheus. The middle hardly seemed to matter when everything came back around to the same place in the end anyway.

"I've heard enough for now," the Inquisitor said, standing suddenly. Her knees ached from kneeling on the cold stone, her neck and shoulder still tender from the journey up. Her attentions still in the infirmary. "We can talk more later." She paused, and added pointedly, "After you've rested." Maybe she should just let Leliana deal with this mess.

The Champion looked up, hood falling back just enough to reveal the bleakness of her features, and the vacant stare with which she regarded the Inquisitor's presence. It was a look Olivia had seen dozens of times in the past, in the forest, on creatures only barely aware of their own existence, but somehow crushingly mindful of their imminent mortality. There was no peace behind those eyes, no warmth behind that pale skin or those blue lips. Olivia offered a wan smile, but it did little to set either of them at ease.

Varric trailed her out, and they walked together along the battlements in silence for a time. It was a lot to take in, and she scarcely knew even where to begin with it. The sight—and smell—of the so-called Champion was difficult enough to overcome. How would the tales of 'The Herald' or 'The Inquisitor' paint her when all of this was done, she wondered? A prodigious rise precipitated a meteoric fall. Olivia had started out falling; maybe that was to her advantage. It all would depend, she supposed, on what was still to come. And who was left to tell it when it was over.

"What's wrong with her?" she asked when they were far enough away from the tower not to be heard.

The dwarf answered with a heavy sigh. "A combination of things. But put simply: lyrium and poor choice in company."

She cocked an eyebrow. "Lyrium?"

"She was smuggling it for a while." He shrugged. "I never approved, mind you. But they needed money, she had experience in the job, and it helped keep some of the templars off their backs. So she said, anyway. I didn't know she was still… Shit. It's worse than I realised, put it that way."

Olivia nodded, crestfallen. Was there anything lyrium had touched and not ruined? "So," she said quietly, shifting her attentions as she turned toward him, "I suppose I'm to ignore the fact that you've been lying to me since I've known you?"

"I never lied to you," he replied. Under her glare, he squirmed and recanted. "All right, through omission,  _maybe_."

"It's been three months, Varric. I'd say you're at least one trebuchet ride out of simple omission into wilful deceit. Now out of nowhere just drop this raving madwoman in my lap. What am I supposed to do with this? With  _her_?"

"That's not fair," Varric said, shaking his head. "I  _did_  request a moment of your time, if you'll recall. You never got back to me." Olivia opened her mouth to defend, but he raised his hands to stop her. "But you're right; I could probably have been a little more forthcoming. But Hawke? You're not seeing her at her best, sure, but if she says she has a lead, she has a lead. That has to count for something."

"Assuming her information isn't already obsolete. Or completely made up." Olivia relented with a slight groan. It had been a long night for everyone. Picking a fight would change nothing. "You ask me to take an awful lot on faith, Varric."

"I know," he admitted. "Look, it might not mean much to you right now, but I vouch for her. Hawke's on a very short list of people I trust with my life. And you haven't thrown me off the side of the mountain, so I'd say that qualifies you for the list too." He sighed again, squirmed some more. "But, listen, in the spirit of our  _honest_  friendship, there's one other thing. Now, it might be nothing." Varric's features fell in hesitation and doubt. "Shit, I hope so…"

"Spit it out."

"When I met her last night, she said something, and I didn't really think much of it. Just your average, run-of-the-mill, lyrium-addled crazy, but…she thought she was being followed."

The Inquisitor's spine stiffened. "By whom?"

He grimaced. "She didn't say. Or, didn't know. And you saw her in there. It's probably nothing." Quietly, uncertainly, staring at his feet, he added, "Just a coincidence."

Olivia laughed joylessly, palms slamming down upon the rough rock wall. A chain of sharp pinpricks detonated through her hands, up her arms. Suddenly she could not remember what had become of her gloves. Rusty stains clung under her fingernails. Cullen's, maybe. Or some other templar's. Saliva flooded into her cheeks, empty stomach upending itself. The blood steaming in the snow, gushing out of a smiling cut she'd made to end a life… She could still feel it there, her hands thick with it, and sticky. Just another beast, she told herself. It was survival, not a choice.

She jammed her eyes shut against a sudden rush of vertigo, swallowed hard.  _Breathe._

"You did this," she said, hard with ire, soft with despair. Each word deliberate, heavy and cold as the stone.  _Breathe._ "Get her a proper room and new clothes. She's your responsibility. Whatever she needs to make her useful to me, Varric." The Inquisitor threw him a sidelong glare. "Am I clear?"

With narrowed eyes, he nodded slowly. Though his teeth stood primed with poison, he dared not take the bite. "Yeah. I got it."

Turning to leave, she said back over her shoulder, "You have a few hours before Cassandra arrives. I suggest you spend it preparing your excuse."

"Shit," she heard him mumble as she left him to it, taking to the stairs. Before she threw him off the mountain.

  
  
* * * * *

 

It was dark but for the gentle orange flicker of the oil lamp on the table adjacent. She awoke into silence and cold, doubled over at the edge of a strange bed in a strange room, but unfamiliarity was becoming its own kind of custom. Every day waking up in some new place, with some new goal, some new crisis; it was hard to keep it all straight in her mind. Little things, like her gloves, kept falling through the cracks, but the cracks seemed to be widening all the time.

As she sat up, blinking through the bleariness, she looked about and waited for all the pieces to fit back into place. The canvas walls and the hard wooden stool beneath her. Hard packed dirt for a floor, the grass long worn away. Bandages and poultices and splints. A blanket around her shoulders? Not hers; this one was thin and itchy, smelled of vapours. Parchment scattered on the ground all around her, much of it crumpled or torn to shreds. Ink stains on her palm. Unpleasant taste of stale wine on her tongue. Letters, she recalled at last. She'd been writing letters while she waited. Trying to. It clearly did not go well.

An earthen aroma lingered in the air, musty and vaguely bitter. It reminded her of wasting flowers, or grandmother's closet after she died, after they packed up her things into oiled wooden chests to stow away, out of sight and mind. The smell of old, forgotten things. Olivia frowned at that memory as she reached for the corners of the cloth poultice that lay over his face, and then gingerly peeled it back. The salves had long dried, and it came away stiff in places, cast in the shape of his brow and cheek. A sigh of mild relief escaped her. Though his face remained shadowed in livid bruises, the swelling had receded, the cuts closed over. It did not hurt quite so much to look at him. It may not even scar.

She abandoned the poultice to the ground among the spent parchment and reached for the cup on the table. Cool water swirled about her thumb as she dipped it in, and then brought it to his mouth, tenderly tracing the outline of his arid lips, chapped from the hurt and the dry cold. She allowed her fingers to linger there longer than she ought to, cupped under his jaw, blistering against the coolness of his skin. They fell to his neck, where more than a week's worth of unkempt scruff concealed more horrifying contusions. As she matched up the markings against her own hand, she exhaled a shaky breath; the purple thumbprint in his flesh was twice as long.

"It twists them, a knife in a hot wound. Wound up, stretched and dark, shadows of what they used to be. Angry, like a bruise."

Olivia yelped and jumped in her seat, snatching her hand away from Cullen's neck. "Damn it, Cole!" Heat flooded from her fingers straight to her cheeks. The shape of him appeared over her shoulder, pressed against the wall of the tent. Or had he been there all along? She could not recall. Surely she would have noticed. "What are you doing here?"

"You invited me," he answered, childlike in his confusion.

"I mean in  _here_. Right now."

"Yes."

She sighed.

"Your dreams are loud and bright, but consumed by fear," Cole said, matter-of-factly, as if it was a reasonable explanation. "His are louder, but full of darkness. You shout and roar, but no one hears. I hear. I'm here. I want to help."

As he stepped up to the side of the bed, Olivia felt the air hitch in her throat, her heart jump. She looked to his hand, and saw that it was empty. Only then could she breathe again.

"I don't know if you can, Cole," she said. Or if she wanted him to. It was hard to take her eyes from the blade at his belt.

"He is dark now. Fire within called the fire without. Swirls of blue smoke, burned up, burned out. Cinders without a spark. How do you light a fire in a man?"

Olivia gripped the bridge of her nose. Even more than normal, he was making her head hurt. "Cole, please…"

"He doesn't want to be the thing he thinks he is," Cole pressed, "but he doesn't know what else to be. The song is soothing, sound and safe. Without it he is bare, blank. A slate full of old scars. He wants you to look, but he doesn't want you to see the cracks."

"Cole, stop—"

"His mind is messy when you're near. Soft, but loud." He was not listening or did not hear, caught up in his strange reverie of stolen secrets that were not his to give. "He wants to live, but he's afraid. Afraid to feel, afraid to fall. He fell before, fumbled and failed. Grey eyes watching, warding. Shame broke him, and his blade turned red in the darkness after. The blood took her away. She was gone and then so was he. He crossed the sea to become the shore, stranded, stricken. Deserted in the darkness. He sees how the sea will take you, too. That's why he needs the fire. It's something to have when he has nothing to hold."

"Enough, Cole! Just be quiet!" she yelled.

There was a sound inside, like the cracking of delicate rib bones under someone's heel. Something whole being crushed into dust. Though his hands were empty, she felt his blade just as keenly as if he had punched it through her heart. Sharp words like shards of glass tearing through her mind, while her lungs filled up with fluid. Hot cheeks, thick throat, and eyes that brimmed with tears she could not understand.

" _Forget…"_

Whispers echoed through her mind; more spiders, scurrying into the recesses before she could catch them. One fog lifted, and just as quickly, another settled in its place. Olivia looked about the tent, sure that someone else was there, but there was no one and nothing. Just dancing shadows and a murmuring pain in her chest and a feeling like cold breath on the back of her neck, fine hairs all stood on end. Her eyes settled upon the on the table, and the tiny blue vial that had not been there before.

Frowning, she reached for it and held it up against the lamplight. It was heavier than she expected. Inside, glowing specks swam and shimmered, flickered and danced about like windswept flame, to the melody of a song she could not hear but rather  _felt,_  like thunder deep inside. She must have brought it with her; didn't she? Who else would have? Then again, why would she? It all seemed so strangely familiar. Something to do with Hawke? She could not quite seem to recall anything with clarity. It was mesmerising, that dance. Beckoning. Her fingers gripped the lid and pulled, releasing a rush of sighs trapped inside.

" _Inquisitor…"_  it whispered. Lulled. Lured.

The vial tipped, and a single drop fell atop the flesh of her thumb. She rubbed it between her fingers. The stuff tingled against her skin, warm and thick. Like blood, but sweeter.

" _Inquisitor…"_ Safe and sound; welcoming.

The anchor pulsed erratically in her palm, something pulling and tugging at her hand.  _How do you start a fire?_ A thought in her voice, but it did not belong to her. Olivia sat and watched, perplexed, petrified as it drifted toward his lips. Was it even her hand? So far away, so close.

"Inquisitor!" Gruffness cut through the sweet. A man's voice.

The open vial in her fingers, the blue slickness on her thumb, so close to his lips. Olivia blinked and shook her head. "What…"

 _ **What are you doing?**_ Her voice. Her thought. Frantic and confused, a shout stumbling out of the fog.

She gasped suddenly and snatched her hand away; it felt as if she'd done this once before. The vial tumbled from her grasp, end over end, spilling its contents all over the ground and table. It splattered over the lamp, leaked down into the oil reservoir. The flame spluttered and fizzled. Swirls of blue smoke billowed out of the sparks, redolent of incense. For such a tiny spark, the smell quickly filled the tent.

"Shit," she muttered fiercely, gathering up a wad of discarded papers to soak the mess up.

"Inquisitor," he snarled again, clearly at the end of his patience.

Olivia spun to face the source of the voice. The Knight-Lieutenant… Bradley…no, Braeden. He stared at her with a quizzical look, a brow raised in unvoiced suspicion. How much had he seen, she wondered? All of it? All of  _what?_ She could barely account for the last few minutes herself. Her heart raced in time with the erratic pulse in her palm, now trembling. If Cullen knew what she had almost done…

"Yes?" she asked curtly, swallowing back a severe lump of dread.

"Visitor," he replied, just as terse.

The Inquisitor stood, discretely wiping the lyrium from her fingers as she straightened her clothes. The tight clench in her jaw hid the anxious waver in her breathing. Braeden held back the tent flap for her as she ducked her head and stepped outside into the fresh night air, a chill to the sheen of sweat arching over her brow. He nodded toward the gate. Unable to hold his stare even a moment, Olivia made way with haste.

A group of men milled about under the portcullis. Three of the silhouettes were clearly Inquisition, but the fourth among them wore different trappings, no less familiar for the great winged helmet that rested upon his head. Even without it, he stood taller than the others, a massive man made larger by the straightness of his spine, the determination in his folded arms, the manner in which he stood without a waver even as the others were clearly ill-at-ease with him. It was a pose she would know anywhere, one she had known her whole life.

Her walk quickened to something between a jog and a skip, and she soon pushed past her soldiers to stand before him. A shadow of a smile ghosted through the slit in his helm.

" _Inquisitor,_ " he rasped, with a faint insinuation of irony.

The smile broadened into the flash of a grin and his stance loosened, arms falling away from his chest. Olivia in turn fell against him, wrapping her arms around his waist. Cold steel. Hard leather. A sword engulfed in flame. Eyes that brimmed with tears she could not understand.

"Everett," she whispered.


	15. Tempering

It seemed strange to be so apprehensive. There was nothing to be nervous of here in the quiet confines of her quarters, she told herself. Only illogical misgivings, the product of an over-tired, over-stressed mind, projecting qualms where none existed. Yet all the same, her insides squirmed and she chewed anxiously at her lip as she poured wine into a pair of cups. The quiet was not comfortable nor a relief, but rather seemed a huge, impossible space that needed filling.

"So," she said on the back of a heavy breath, a steeling one, as she grabbed up the cups. "What brings you all the way here?"

Having dragged the settee halfway across the room so that he could sit before the fire, Everett now half-lay in it, sprawled with a drowsy inelegance and his head draped over the arm. When she turned, she found him staring at her, unmoved and unmoving. He was a fine-featured man, taking after their mother, with high cheekbones and an aquiline nose that cut his face into a profile of chiselled severity. With a glower alone, ashen and bleak, Everett Trevelyan could drive a lesser man to kneel. Olivia did not bend, but swallowed back a tangle of nerves and forced herself to smile.

Those grey eyes tracked her as she crossed from her desk, pierced through her when she stopped before him and offered him a glass. It hung between them, his gaze flicking from her face to her hand and back again. He snapped upright and reached out, swift, sudden, startling. A burgundy splash spilled over the lip of the cup as she jumped backward, then ran down her thumb, warm, and dripped to the rug. Olivia huffed and swore under her breath; Everett merely smirked. One hand took the cup, but with the other he grabbed her forearm and pulled to inspect the waxing, waning glow of the symbol etched into her flesh. His hands were rough and so was his hold, a powerful grip with no regard for the way he twisted and tugged. She frowned at the discomfort, but did not pull away.

Everett grunted, contemptuously, then let go. "I thought it would be more…impressive."

"It's plenty enough trouble," she replied, sitting at the opposite end, knees pulled up tight against her chest and her left arm tucked securely away. The ghost of his grasp haunted her flesh, raw and tingling.

"Indeed," he muttered, and then flopped back into his laze, eyes closed.

The years wore on his face more keenly than she remembered, in deep creases around his eyes and nose, and carved into his brow. Hair once as black as the Bann's was now ravaged by flashes of silver, cropped short and neatly groomed to disguise the receding. As a templar, age afforded him a certain gravitas, a mask of strife worn like a medal of service. To Olivia, it was a reminder of how long it had been since she had last seen him. In twenty years, she could recall only six visits with certainty, brief sojourns on his way to some other posting or appointment. The last was almost seven years ago, just before he was appointed to the rebuilt Circle in Starkhaven.

"You got old," she blurted.

He opened his eyes long enough only to glance down the length of his nose at her, then grunted. "And it seems you, like most women, were sweeter when you were younger."

"I'm not sure that's true," she said with a snort, sifting through decades-old memories of the two of them together, but finding few. "Do remember the Tourney? That one knight from…oh, where was it? Val Chevin?"

"Val  _Firmin_ ," he corrected. "Oh, I remember. Cowardly fool. Thought to seduce the crowd with his geniality by offering his last rose to a cute little noble girl. But there were none about, I suppose, so he picked you." She struck out with her foot and prodded him in the knee. Everett chuckled. "And you played coy and hid behind the Bann's legs. Until he gave you one of those  _looks_."

"He said my 'behaviour was unbecoming,'" she said, doing her best imitation of the Bann's gravelly tone. It was a poor effort.

"Oh, little did he know! My little sister, ever meek, ever gracious," he said, voice a weary rasp, but laden with mockery. "Took a man's rose, only to throw it to the ground and stomp all over it."

She laughed, blushing. "And I yelled something like 'my brother will beat you senseless!'"

"You didn't even yell it. You just looked him right in the eyes and you  _told_  him. To a round of uproarious laughter from half of Tantervale. Even the Bann broke a smile."

"I was very proud of you."

And she had been. Tall and lean and muscular, with a mane of black hair that hung about his shoulders, the young Everett Trevelyan had about him a look of a young warrior from legend, and the confidence to go with. Cocky, she supposed in retrospect, and aloof as well. Everything about him was a challenge, but that was part of his charm, and to garner his notice felt a great victory. How a wilting flower must feel to be blessed by the rain. It was a stark contrast to the modest and soft-spoken Aidan, who came home from the monastery every Wintersend until his Vigil, and spent that single week of the year doting on Olivia and her sisters before disappearing from their lives again.

"Then you didn't give me a rose at all," she added, voice stung by the nostalgia. "Even after I endorsed you so fervently."

"Too many pretty girls. I ran out," he replied with a half shrug. He grinned then. "Trounced him in the melee after that. I remember the crowd chanting 'Stomp the Vermin!' He went home a shattered pride and several fewer teeth, courtesy of my shield arm. Exhilarating."

Olivia smiled.

That trip to Tantervale had seemed like such a great adventure. Wave upon wave of sights and smells washing over her. Thousands of coloured flags flittering above the streets. Every kind of food imaginable—hot pies and meat skewers, pastries and puddings and other sugary confections. Jesters and minstrels, horses and knights everywhere she looked. The roar of the crowd shook the whole stand as they watched the games. Then at the end of a long day, lying awake in their room at the inn, too excited for sleep amid the muffled cacophony of the merrymakers downstairs. To a young girl from a small bannorn, at the outskirts of a mid-sized city on the sea, it seemed impossible that life could ever get more exciting.

Everett's mirth at their reminiscing soon faded into a quiet brood. He stared for a long time at his cup, hypnotised by the gentle tremor of the scarlet nectar inside. "You never could say no to the Bann."

Olivia shrugged, puzzled by the subtle accusation. "Of course. Why would I deny him? All that I am, he gave me."

"Indeed. And look at you now. All grown up, still stomping all over the place," he muttered, and took a large gulp of the wine, wincing at the flavour. It was Olivia, though, who tasted the sour note.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

With a roll of his eyes and a sigh, he said, "Oh, calm down, Olivia. Only that your—what is it, 'Inquisition'?—hardly leaves a subtle footprint."

"True enough," she said dubiously, her knit-together brows betraying her affront at the scorn he showed toward her station. Reverence could be tiresome, but she had grown accustomed enough to it that the alternative was now jarring.

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, it came to her that it had never been just the two of them like this before. There had always been some buffer to steer them toward common ground, and she just one of many flowers vying for his notice. Faced now with the full force of the downpour, it felt more like drowning, and the years between them opened up like a vast ocean with no clear view across. It seemed the only sure things they had in common were blood and the war, and blood was easily shed.

"Have you heard from Aidan?" she asked after a time, hoping to steer the conversation away from herself in the only way she could think how.

"Haven't you?" he answered with an incredulous huff. Everett shrugged when she shook her head. "I don't hear from him. Not  _directly_. Hasmal, last I knew."

"Hasmal?" Olivia echoed. "But that was almost three years ago. He moved to Cumberland."

"Then you clearly know more than I do."

She frowned. "Are you not even the slightest bit concerned?" Admittedly, she had no idea what kind of relationship Everett and Aidan had. They were brothers, in blood and duty; she assumed that to carry all the weight it conveyed.

"I'm not his keeper any more than you are."

The attack on the camp still so near in her thoughts made Everett's indifference even more galling. Olivia lashed out. "How can you say that? He's our brother. Do you even know what's happening in the world, Everett? What's happening to the  _Order_?"

"Oh, of course I do, Olivia. I live it every day; it's not just something I fell into by happenstance," he sniped. "Aidan is a grown man. And I have my own matters to attend. Frankly, I'd think  _you,_ the almighty Inquisitor, would have more pressing concerns as well."

Olivia glowered. "I suppose that's where you and I differ, Everett. I'm able to manage my affairs without sacrificing my loyalty to the people I love," she shot back venomously.

"And yet you don't know where your  _beloved_  brother is any better than I do."

The blow was crushing. From out of the wound bled a gruesome emptiness, and it spread like cracks snaking across thin ice beneath her feet. Cracks that creaked and moaned under the weight of all that nothingness and split apart into great fissures to engulf her. His coldness left her breathless, left her raw and ruined in the wreckage of all the things she had ever taken for granted.

With a groan, Everett sat up, rubbing at his face. "I need to sleep."

Down in the courtyard, she had been so relieved for a familiar face, a piece of her old life to cling to when the current was so treacherous. But now she understood her nervousness. She had no better knowledge of this man before her than any of the soldiers in her service. He was family, but not familiar. Even their shared memories, besides longing to a long lost past, were painted in vastly different palettes, and they both had come a long way from the strapping young warrior and awestricken little girl who lived in her memory. 

"Fine," Olivia replied summarily, staring at the hearth because she could not abide looking at him. She felt him, though; felt those stormy eyes upon her flesh, and that creeping quiet that demanded to be filled. But she had nothing left to give, and could only recoil even tighter. Curled up before the warmth of the fire, she shivered and shuddered.

At last he stood, and went to the side of the bed, where he began to strip off his layers of plate. They dropped to the floor, discarded with disdain or ambivalence, sloughed like a skin that he would simply grow back on the morrow. As each piece hit the floor with a clatter, she flinched, and found herself wishing that it had been Aidan at the gate instead .

The bed creaked as Everett lay down, and she heard him sigh. "I've managed perfectly fine, Livvy. I'm sure he has too."

Like the skin he had shed, his assurance rung hollow. Unwilling even to move lest he take it as acknowledgement, she sat silently and thought again of all of her old friends and what they might have grown into. She thought of Cullen as she knew him, and wondered what he might have been before. She thought of herself and of the Inquisitor, and how the lines had bled and run together so that even she could not know where one began and the other ended. She thought of that awful ball in Orlais, and how the masks they wore did not concealed their identities so much as they informed them. She thought all these things, and wondered sorrowfully if it was possible ever to know another person. 

If there was a worse feeling than emptiness, Olivia discovered, it was to be full to the brim with regret.


	16. Lingering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, apologies. It's been a rough couple of weeks for me on the creative front, as I'm sure is self-evident. There have been days where I have felt with a disturbing sense of sureness that I had used up all my words. I can see the things I want to put down and when they come out it is just a mess of vomit and dross. I know where I want to be. I've forgotten how to get there. So please, do bear with me while we sort through these technical difficulties. I hope it won't take long. *muzak*
> 
> Christ. I couldn't even remember which bear to use. Let's go with.......polar.

 

* * *

 

_You_ _'re dying._

The forest stands silent and empty, and he within it the same. Wan and wooden like the blanched trees whose shadows close in around him, he is one more ghost among a hundred of them. Here they all stand, waiting. They sway gently in erratic rhythm, a macabre waltz, a heartbeat out of time. Snow gathers around his rooted feet. It seems years since he has seen the sun. The sky weeps ash; it falls in flakes like winter's breath and stains the world in ruin. It clings to him, to his skin, to his hair, to the inside of his throat where it cuts like knives as he swallows. Lingering, like the smell of smoke long after a fire, and like everything here, beyond its welcome.

It is hard to go on standing. His limbs are heavy, leaden weights pulling him toward the earth that waits to take him. To keep his eyes open seems a great effort, and they flutter against the lure of endless sleep. The weight is mirrored in his lungs, for the air is amiss, thick and grey and stale, difficult to breathe. Dead. There is something else inside his chest, a hurt he cannot reach, not a wound but sharp like one; the pain left behind by something no longer there. It is a hunger, a longing, distant but raw. He is incomplete. He is dying.

"I know," he says aloud, though his voice falls flat, slips out of him as a whisper, swallowed up by the deadness of this place, choked by the soot. He knows. This feeling, this heaviness, this distant hurt, this silent ache. This stale air, these boundless ghosts. He has been here before. A cage is a cage, though the bars may differ.

Out of nowhere, out of all this nothing, she comes at last as he knew she would, but it is not the one he has come to expect. It is that older ghost, from that other life, from that tower on the lake, that place where his life first ended. All the pains in this space are old and out of time, like him. She comes to him now— _why? Why now?_ —all dressed in robes of midnight, but her face is a blurry mess of colours and shapes that mean naught to him. He remembers things; feelings, but not features. Remembers watching from afar, out of reach but near enough that she could change the air around him, make it heat up and tingle on his skin. Near enough for his head to fill with emptiness, for him to lose his place in prayer, and for just a moment to forget what he was for. He remembers blood and absence. He remembers anger and hate. Remembers driving his sword through innocent hearts, and her calm complicity at his rage. He remembers the monster at the end of the rope, and surviving the madness at the cost of his soul.

Nothing in him stirs now. Only ash, kicked up by memories that are quickly swept out of mind. He has forgotten more about her than he ever actually knew.

"Why are you here?" he asks, wearily.

"So you won't wake her," she replies. He frowns. Everything about her was a riddle; a field of traps and trials that helped to keep her guarded. And him too. Secrets were the shield that kept him from breaking, once. "Why are you?"

It seems a simple question, but the answer sticks in his throat, fumbles through his fingers when he tries to grasp it. He is waiting for something. Wasting, but unwilling. There are things still yet to do. Things his fool hands won't let go of. "I'm not ready," he finally says.

"You are stronger than you think, but not strong enough for this. You spent more than you had left. It has to come from somewhere else. And it's killing you."

The hollow inside of him pulses, but it is growing weaker the longer he stands here. "I know."

"It won't take much. Vast forests fall on embers," she assures him. "You can go back."

It's becoming harder to recall things, even the old things he has carried forever. Harder to stay upright. Harder to stay awake. There is a flicker, some sense of something being lost. He thinks of the stars and sea, but can't quite make the meaning. Only sadness, and it makes him idle. He could just stay here. What is he fighting for? It seemed so important before. "What if it's too late?"

"If you can ask, it isn't."

He looks down at his legs, buried now to the thigh in the cold and the ash. How long has he been here? The armoured plates are all bent and beaten and old, but there is still flesh somewhere beneath the steel. Still warmth somewhere beneath the void. He can go back. But what will he be when he gets there? "I don't know the way." It sounds like an excuse. It is.

"Though all before you is shadow…"

"What—?"

By the time he looks up, only an echo of her remains, an echo of an echo of an echo, gradually drowned out by the thrumming in his ears. A swift panic in him reigns. His waning pulse, his loosening fingers; he is running out of time.

All at once, the gloom before him parts and in the distance, he sees tendrils of livid smoke lifting over the hard grey edge of the finite horizon. There is music on the air, a beckoning song. He is not alone here. Is this the dawn that was promised?

The ice that binds his feet strains and struggles to hold him down; he strains and struggles against it to be free. It takes effort, more than he thinks he has, but he cannot stop, keeps twisting and fighting until the ice gives way. He wrenches himself from the grip of the despair, and the sudden freedom is overwhelming. Staggering out of a cutting torpor, out of breath on new-born legs, weak and wavering, he braces against the nearest tree. So much effort for so little gain, and there is still so far to go. But he is not alone, and that is enough. With a push and his eyes fixed on the edge of the world, he sets off, wading through the ashes of his life in search of the fire he hopes to find still burning at its heart.

Fear drives him, fury warms him and desperation is his lash.


	17. Scrubbing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It just so happens your friend here is just MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference..
> 
> More coming soon, I hope! Still fiddling.

 

* * *

  
Mid-morning sun blazed through the stained glass window, shattering into a thousand shards of colour that cascaded down across her face, cutting her sleep short. She roused this time into surrounds all too familiar, doubled over at her desk, numb arms pinned between her heavy head and the hard slab of oak that bore all the worries of the world. Gingerly, reluctantly, she opened her eyes against the light, to a sharpness made sharper by a lingering haze of a most potent wine. So much wine; sweet and sinister, with an aftertaste of regret that slithered down the back of her throat, and then back up with remembrance of her generous libations. Olivia groaned and buried her face in the crook of her elbow. An hour more of sleep could not possibly hurt, but a minute more of this sunlight would be agony.

It was not meant to be.

There came a rumbling, a distant pounding that quickly eclipsed the one inside her sore head. Footsteps thundering up wooden stairs, rails shaking and rattling. She became convinced she could hear every creak, every whine, feel the plight of every nail straining against the booming cacophony as if it was happening beside her, happening  _to_  her. It sounded an army. When the first set of boots hit the stone landing, she burrowed deeper into her arm, willing it away. Oh, to be a mage, that she might just twitch her fingers and disappear from whatever fresh disaster had just arrived upon her doorstep.

"'Ard at work I see, Yer Grace."

Marceline, her principle attendant. A slight-but-capable woman of barely five feet tall and in most ways rather unremarkable, with her dirty beige smocks and mousy hair pulled always into a loose mop on top of her head. The kind of woman who could enter and exit a room without attracting any attention—though apparently not this morning—and who blended so perfectly into the scenery as to be practically invisible. A desirable trait for a servant. Invisible and forgettable. At least, until she opened her mouth.

Olivia groaned again. "Please stop shouting."

Louder, shriller. A tittering laugh like the shrieking of a rabbit caught in eagle's talons. "Say again, Yer Grace? Didn't quite catch that. Should I speak louder? If you insist!"

How Marceline came to be in the employ of the Inquisition was somewhat of a mystery. There were stories, of course—most of them from Marceline's own mouth—that she had once been a handmaiden to the Queen of Ferelden, but was turned with dishonour out for dallying with the King, and spent the next several years shuffling from one noble house to the next across the southern country. Like so many of Skyhold's refugees, circumstances collided and she was somehow simply  _there_. Cooking, cleaning, carrying lumber; Marceline didn't seem to care what was asked of her. It would have been easy to dismiss her as a flagrant opportunist, given the implausibility of her claims, had Josephine not received—not one but  _four_ —favourable letters from houses for whom Marceline claimed to have worked. (It was decided, at that point, not risk a diplomatic incident by pursuing Anora's opinion, much to the disappointment of an amused Inquisitor.) In spite of some of her less  _charming_  personality traits, the woman had proved both dutiful and loyal, and even oddly nurturing in her own way. It helped, Olivia suspected, that she was possessed of no bed into which Marceline could jump.

With a sigh, Olivia pushed herself upright and bared a wolfish smile. "I said 'Good morning, Marcy. A pleasure as always to see you.'"

Softer, she replied, "Oh, ain't you just a darling." The woman smirked as she set down a meal tray on the desk. "Eat. I'll not 'ave the Inquisitor sleepin' all day, not on my watch. Work to do. The lady ambassador's been askin' after you all morning. The little dwarven fella looked in a right fluster, too. Heard the Seeker shouting from clear across the yard when I was doing the wash. Poor form on her part, I reckon. He's 'alf her size, fer cryin' out loud."

The Inquisitor was barely listening, but rather watching as a line of a dozen ladies carried pails to the bathtub waiting in the rear room. The din of the water splashing into the tub might as well have been a raging waterfall. She shuddered. "Your commitment to my productivity might be inspiring, Marceline, were it not so presently annoying."

Marceline beamed. "Eat, I said. Then bath. Then get your dainty little arse downstairs.  _Your_   _Grace._ "

"Hard to believe I pay coin to be spoken to this way," she murmured as she leaned forward to inspect the tray. A covered bowl of something, a selection of dried fruits and a pot of tea. She chewed on her lip nervously, insides gurgling.

" _You_  don't pay me. Lady Montilyet does."

"Semantics," Olivia argued, reaching dubiously for the lid of the bowl and lifting it just a crack.

The smell hit before she could visually identify the contents. Steaming milk and spices, earthy grain and cloying honey. Sickly and sweet, warm and damp, like old, worn socks. Her stomach churned and revolted, and her mind followed after, conjuring thoughts of spoilt cheese and soured milk, of oats rotting in dank, dark places. Or of chantry incense and the various horrors it was often used to disguise; mostly bodily odours and sometimes funerary decay, as when the Revered Mother died and she lay in state for days before the burn. Those last days in Ostwick came back to mind, and soon it was all she could smell, all she could taste. Olivia shook her head vehemently and shoved the bowl away, as far as her arms would reach.

Marceline shook her head and sighed, a maternal chiding, though she was only a few years older than the Inquisitor. "At least 'ave some tea," she demanded, not waiting for agreement before she began to pour. "Managed to charm Master Pavus of some of that brew you like."

Olivia laughed quietly as she took the cup. "I think your  _particular_  charms had less effect than you think. But I thank you for your efforts."

Marcy stood back then, hands on her bony hips, observing the procession of handmaidens carting their buckets away. She barked a few shrill orders and clapped her hands at them, and they scurried back down the stairs like scolded pups. She giggled. "Love watching 'em scatter like that." When they were alone, she turned back toward the Inquisitor and clucked her tongue in a playful manner. "So, you'll be needin' some fresh linens then, I imagine?"

The question elicited only a baffled grunt from Olivia, thoroughly absorbed in her cup of tea.

"Needn't play coy, Yer Grace. Your, um,  _gentleman friend_  certainly didn't when he emerged from your quarters this morning, bold as he pleased. All _smiles_ ; you must've worked 'im up real nice, ay? Handsome enough fellow, I suppose. Bit birdish, though, if y'know what I mean? And older than I expected, to be sure. I thought someone a little more… _built…_ One them taut, young recruits of the Commander's, mayhaps. You ever watch them train in the yard? Maker's balls. All ripplin' and glistenin' in the sun…" She fanned herself for effect. "And you ain't so past it that you need settle on any old thing scratches at your door. Not that I'm judging, mind. Come a time, now and again, when maybe you just gotta take whatyou can get, 'owever drunk and sweaty and hairy it might be. Honestly, 'ow is it a man can have more hair on his shoulders than on his head? Blows me."

Olivia tried her best to follow along, but the uneven accent and the wild meandering overwhelmed her diminished faculties. Soon all she could think of was sweaty, hairy shoulders, and her lip curled into a disgusted grimace. "Marceline, what in the worl—" All at once, the wine haze lifted and in its place came vile realisation, curdling her stomach faster than that hateful porridge. "Ugh, Maker, no! Marcy! That was my brother! He arrived late last night."

Marceline's eyes widened, and she mouthed her understanding. She then screwed up her face with disbelief. "You don't look much like 'im."

"Thank you," she mumbled, still shuddering. Olivia paused then, mulling over her cup and glancing sidelong at the settee, still sitting where Everett had rearranged it; to the bed covers, twisted and tangled as he had rolled out of them upon waking; the indentation of his head in her mangled pillow. A bitter taste spread across her tongue, but not from the brew. "Change them," she said. "And see about finding him quarters."

She wasted no time. "Noble, yeah?" she asked, stripping the pillows of their casings. "Might be able to clear something a bit fancier out in the east wing, I s'pose. Take some shuffling about. Got them new mages mucking everything up," she mused.

"He's a templar," the Inquisitor corrected. "Modest accommodations will suffice. You needn't go to any special effort."

"Oh, that right? Well, in that case, I got a bed he can occupy, all right. Wouldn't be any effort at all, I reckon." She grinned wickedly. "Not for 'im, anyway. I ain't afraid a bit o' old fashioned elbow grease, if y'know what I mean?"

Olivia cringed. "Oh, Marcy, I beg of you…not one more word." With a sigh, she put aside her tea, finding she had little appetite now even for it, and forced herself slowly up from her chair. A lump of bile crawled up her pipe; she swallowed it back down, scowling. "I think I need that bath. Immediately."


	18. Sinking

_Maker, help me._

No one much came to the western shore anymore. Over the years, as the town had grown in size and crept gradually further inland, so too had the local fishermen abandoned their old haunts and built their new docks on the north-eastern edge. Closer to the market and the centre of town; closer to the King's Road and its travellers with their heavy purses. The only evidence left behind from those before-times was a single, abandoned fishing pier, grey and weathered like the men who had built it all those years ago.

This was his place, now.

The lake sat calm, glassy and inviting. A cool relief from the hot summer sun; the reward for a productive morning of chores; the reason to rise early and get things done, and something sacred that belonged just to him. More than simple habit, it had become summertime ritual. It required preparation. Meditation. First, he stripped down to his smalls so that his mother would not chide him for soaking his clothes. He folded them neatly at the end of the abandoned dock, with a stone atop to prevent them from blowing away; it was a long enough walk back home without shame for company. A deep breath, a good shake of the limbs. Heart quavering, an anticipatory ripple of goosebumps…and…

_Go._

The stinging slap of bare feet on warm wood planks. Wind in his hair, sun on high. Every muscle working, hot blood pulsing through his veins. The dock disappeared at speed. There was a moment near the end, a point of no return, undefined and fluid; it was a feeling, some inherent  _knowing_  that he must either commit or retreat. Little room for hesitation. The last step was heavy and final. With a push, the pier gave way, and he suddenly was flying, hanging pendulous between two worlds. The earth behind him fell away, the face of the water expanded beneath him. A vast, black portal into a swirling netherworld, waiting to swallow him up. He stiffened, body straight as a plank, legs rigid, arms the same at his sides. Eyes jammed shut, waiting for impact.

There was a blast with the collision, an explosion in his ears, so fierce it was as if the whole world was ending. A desperate gasp, one last breath to hold him as he went under. Shivers broke out in the sudden darkness as he sunk into that other world. Tingling, rippling numbness; the prick of raw ice on hot skin. It lasted only a few seconds before, with legs kicking wildly, he clawed his way back up to the surface. By the time he reached it and took his first gulp of fresh air, the only feeling he knew was relief. A little death, and the promised rebirth. In the water he was weightless, splashing about without care or worry, washed clean of the morning's toils. Free.

Sometimes freedom belied the noose.

In the year of his eighth name-day, a great storm moved in from over the Wilds. A 'witch's storm', the townsfolk called it, for it blew in calmly, quietly, but gravid with calamity; an uninvited spectre of foul intent slinking in in dead of summer's night. When the heavens at last opened, the earth was maimed with the full fury of the anguished sky. Wild, violent, unpredictable. For a one whole day and well into the next, the witch's wrath reigned over the southern arling. The torrential downpour flooded roads, while vicious winds tore out trees and fences, ripped off roofs and severed boats of their moorings. Townspeople huddled in the cellars of their battered homes, heads bowed in fervent prayer that whatever malevolence had set the heavens upon them would soon be satiated. Even after the fury of the wind and rain died, the cloud lingered overhead for days, a looming threat of further retribution.

The witch's reckoning did not come in the form of yet more bluster and flood, however. Rather, when at last the storm did pass, relief was spare, as it was the scorned sun that next rose vengeful, and scalded the sodden earth.

That first new morning after the squall, he set out into the pastures with his father mending mangled fences. It was tiring work in the best of conditions. Hours of walking, bending, hunching, lifting, holding, hammering. The dank humidity of that day quickly sapped him of his energy—even of his very will to live, if his dramatic whining was to be believed. Swing a hammer? May as well have asked him to lift a mountain. Even his father, a patient man who rarely complained about anything, grumbled often that morning as he struggled to lift and set the posts. By midday, they had completed a rough patch on the worst damage, good enough to hold for another, milder day. He was released of his duties, and ran right for the lake.

He stripped off the sweat-soaked tunic hastily, cringing at the chafing sound as it peeled away from his skin. The string on his trousers tangled and became knotted around his impatient fingers, but rather than waste time fighting in knots, he decided this time to just leave them on. Mother would grouse, but so be it, and his tunic was already wet through anyway. What difference did it make? Since there was no breeze, he did not bother with the stone for his wadded-up shirt, and without further delay, he took off running. His footfalls were heavier than usual, hard, penetrating strikes on his heel that jarred all the way to the knee. The moment came upon him so quickly he almost missed it, but retreat never crossed his mind, anyway. He was fully committed to the leap, and soon was airborne.

It was not until then, in that pendulous breath between worlds, that he at last looked down at the water and found it amiss. Murky and brown, and the end of the pier was choked by driftwood and other storm debris that he had overlooked in his haste. He panicked immediately, limbs flailing uselessly in the air; too late for that now. Nothing to grab, nothing to hold, nothing at all to stop him from plunging straight into it. In the frenzy, he became twisted and turned about, his body made vulnerable by his mind's fear. Far from his usual smooth entry, the broad stretch of his back hit the water first with a biting slap. All of the air came barrelling out of his throat with the blast and then he went under quickly, the stunning pain of the blow even more numbing than the cold. It paralysed him. He was not weightless, but a weight, sinking.

The surface debris was not the worst of it. Beneath the muddy face of the water lurked strings of giant hornwort, pushed as a writhing mass to shore from the deeper waters. Leafy tendrils scraped against his skin, reminding him of the grotesque, thousand-legged worm-like creatures he sometimes found around the barn. The stupor broke as a fresh panic spread through him, shivers spilling down his spine at the idea of those vile things, and he twisted about in vain to shrug off both the thought and the weed. The hornwort was oppressive. It wrapped around his thrashing limbs, snagged in the weave of his waterlogged trousers. The harder he struggled, the more entangled he became. Already crippled by the heat and the morning's work, he exhausted quickly.

There was a burn in his empty lungs, a dire pressure. Sometimes when they roughhoused, Branson would pin his arms and sit upon his chest until he gave quarter. This was worse than that. It was a fight to keep his mouth closed against the instinct to release. If he could only make the surface… But so turned about was he, and the water so dark and strangled by wreckage, he could not tell up from down. The fear changed, twisted into a grim despair, with his would-be tears lost to the apathetic waters.

A slew of thoughts leapt to mind. There was a rabbit stew in the pot for dinner; not his favourite, but especially on a day like this. A board sat awaiting his next turn. He and Mia had started a fresh game just before bed, and he was  _so close_  to finally beating her; maybe this would be the one. Father had just finished reading Transfigurations. Tonight's bedtime prayer was to be the Canticle of Trials, his most favourite verse. Some of the verses tended to drone on, but Trials was exciting, if a bit sad. It told of fierce warriors of faith bravely, fearlessly marching to the Maker's side, whose final moments were so sure and full of love and hope, it was impossible to feel too badly for them.

_I have faced armies with You as my shield,_  his mind recited blearily.  _My enemies are abundant._ It popped to mind all jumbled and out of turn.  _Faith sustains me. I am not alone. Even…with eyes closed…stumbling…_ His body grew still, silent but for his throbbing pulse in his ears. His lungs remained on fire and he a stone, still sinking.  _Maker, help me. Please. I'll do anything, I promise._

_I see…I see the Light is here._

Sinking…

_There is no darkness in the Maker's light._

—oOo—  
  


Skin slick with sweat. Body quaking with racking cold. Mouth dry, a desert ravaged by a thousand-year thirst. There was a pounding in his head, distant and dull; the thunder of an ancient war drum, an echo out of time from a cold, dead place. Everything ached. Down to the bones, broken and bruised, and deeper even than that. Down into the yawning chasm at the heart of him. The void. The seat of his fury now sat empty. Embers and smoke.

A taste on his tongue, remnant of a feast his body had long forgotten. A dire urgency screaming through his blood.

He came to wanting, in the grip of a most terrible need.


	19. Prising

The ambassador and the spymaster were standing in close counsel when she entered the chamber, a scene that filled her with quiet dread. Josephine was affable enough; it was Leliana who most unnerved her. Despite her best efforts, the woman had proved difficult to warm to. Everything about her was a grim calculation, and just being around her was enough to make the hairs on Olivia's neck twitch. It was not mistrust, exactly. Indeed, she had little choice  _but_  to trust them, which was its own cause for consternation. Rather, she was keenly aware of the quantity of influence contained within this hall. Many lives hinged on the mercy—or lack thereof—of these two women, whose skill at the game was not impressive so much as it was terrifying. Even the Inquisitor herself was not free of their sway. Every action Olivia took was, deliberately or otherwise, vetted against what she believed her advisers would best approve of. For a relatively sheltered Chantry brat, grown up with her head in books and verse, it was impossible to not feel a degree of inadequacy in their company. A pretender in a house of liars. A sheep in wolf's clothing.

"Ah, there you are!" Josephine trilled with cheer. "I was beginning to think we would not see you today at all."

Fumbling for a reasonable excuse for her tardiness that might also preserve her dignity, Olivia instead found her attentions drawn to a huge, ornate golden box occupying the desk. It glistened invitingly in the streaming sunlight. She pointed. "What's that?"

"A gift, for you, from Orlais," the ambassador replied. "That… _mage_. Morrigan…?" It was rare to see her struggle so for delicacy. "She arrived this morning with offerings from the crown. Among…other things." A fleeting frown crossed her face.

Olivia arched a brow. "Ousted so soon?" she mused, curious fingers tracing the decorative ridges carved into the lid. Up close, it was not the impossible extravagance it appeared from afar, but just ordinary wood, disguised under a craftsman's chisel, its plainness and faults cleverly concealed by gold leaf. Dressed up to look like something more than what it was. " _And_  relegated to royal messenger? I'm sure she loved that."

Leliana hummed. "Gaspard wastes no time in scrubbing the crown of all Celene's influence."

There was a touch of something in her tone, a sour note nestled between regret and ridicule, and it was vexing. Olivia bit her tongue rather than pursue it; it would not suit to make an adversary of her today. She turned instead back to the box, fingering the metal clasp with reluctant interest. There was an excitement in the material comforts of her position that she could not deny. Life in the Chantry had been necessarily humble, even though she had been afforded some special allowances, owing to her family's generous tithes. It was a stark contrast to the Inquisitor's lifestyle, however, which was anything but modest. Servants and splendour, connections and coin enough to provision a lifetime. It was a taste of what her life might have been, had she been born to any other noble house in the Marches.

On the other hand, there was some unseemliness in the way people lavished upon her, and the divide between personal and political gain was often ill-defined. It drew only cloudier when she flipped the latch and lifted the lid.

A fresh bout of sickness bubbled up in her throat as pungent aromas of lavender, rose and cedar wafted out of the crate. It was full to the brim with fineries. She dug through the top layer of wadding to find bundles of soaps and oils, powders and fragrant waters. Under that was another gilded box, and inside of that one, a striking gold mask adorned with emeralds and sapphires, plumed with pearlescent black feathers. Beneath all that, a gown in rich midnight velvet, with flowing skirts of silk and organza that glittered like a swathe of night sky. Delicate teardrop beads like twinkling stars garnished the entire bodice. Olivia was more transfixed by the petiteness of the waist, and became breathless at the mere thought of the corseting it would require to get her into it. Finally, to complete the ensemble was a pair of dainty heeled shoes, similarly beaded and laced with long ribbons of gold. The craftsmanship on it all was stunning, but far too excessive to have been completed in scant days.

At the bottom of the box sat an envelope, addressed to 'The Lady Trevelyan' and stamped with the insignia of the Orlesian throne. Hard red wax; a seal in blood. A week ago they had offered an empress up like a common lamb unto the butcher's blade, and this was her reward for supplying the meat. Her furrow deepening, she put the heavy gown aside and tore the open letter. "'My dear Inquisitor,'" she read aloud, "'Let these gifts betoken not only my deepest gratitude, but also my profoundest admiration. The magnificent nation of Orlais will soon be restored to her true glory, with thanks to you. She and I remain at your disposal. I look forward 'til next we meet, and eagerly anticipate the fruit of our burgeoning relations. Faithfully yours, Emperor Gaspard de Chalon of Orlais.'" Her face screwed up at the last. "I may never eat fruit again."

"Strong language." Josephine inhaled sharply. "He means to court you."

"Surely not," Olivia replied with an incredulous laugh. "With a box of such tawdry gifts? Probably something his men yanked from Celene's closet before they set the rest on fire. No." The other two exchanged a silent look that spoke volumes. "Wait…to be clear, you aren't actually advocating this?" The quiet lingered on far too long, and left her aghast. "No. You can't be serious."

"The Inquisition has already amassed the influence of a modest city-state, and that will only grow. It is natural that there be some interest in more  _permanent_  alliances. Naturally, before such thing was to occur, we would need to discuss the Inquisition's long-term ambitions. And while Gaspard is not a terrible option, we should not rule out other possibilities. Your own Free Marches may offer—" Sensing the Inquisitor's rapidly diminishing patience, Josephine stopped herself and proffered an abashed smile. "A discussion for a later date, perhaps." The ambassador then reached out and touched her arm lightly. "And of course, any decision would ultimately be yours."

There was little assurance to be had in something said that should have stood without. Irritated, Olivia rubbed at her temples, hoping to soothe a renewed throbbing underneath. It was an aspect of her position that she had never stopped to consider, and why would she? Ending Corypheus, that was what ultimately mattered, wasn't it? While that threat loomed, an ever-present shadow over all existence world, it seemed that all anyone saw was the shade of power gathering under her. How was it possible that as her influence swelled, the way people viewed actually diminished? 'The Inquisitor' was one more unremarkable  _thing_  to be draped in gold and made-believe was something more. A prize to be won or fought over, offered up or bargained with like coin over a hand of cards.  _This_  was the danger in material benefit. No gift came truly free of expectation.

Appalled at the very idea, Olivia crushed the letter in her palm and tossed it back into the box. Cullen's voice whispered in the back of her mind, then; his warning plea that night on the palace balcony.  _Don't accept anything he may offer you_. Was this what he meant? Did he  _know_  about this?

"The shoes are pretty," the spymaster offered.

The Inquisitor scoffed. "Then take them. They certainly don't belong to  _me._ "

The chamber door burst open then with bluster. Olivia's head shot up at the sound of steel footfalls scratching at the stone; a fleeting flutter in her chest, a vain hope quickly shattered.

"Ah, little Livvy's up at last. Alert the troops, war can finally wage," Everett jeered as he strode in, arms clasped behind his back. That wry smile that was proving a staple.

After brief introductions, he slung one arm about Olivia's shoulders and gathered her into an uncomfortable embrace. It seemed overly-affectionate, exaggerated. A special show for company, she suspected. The Inquisitor tensed and pushed back from him, but just as last night, his hold only firmed when she resisted.

Sniffing at the air about her, he gagged, also exaggerated. "Andraste's tears, sister, what is this? You smell like a cheap Orlesian courtesan," he said before letting go.

"I'm sure  _I_  wouldn't know," she bit back with an annoyed frown.

The smile did not fade with her barb but visibly changed, the deficit reflected in his stare, void of emotion. A reminder that even ice sparkled. It lasted less than two heartbeats, but long enough, and then, with a toothless hum of a laugh, he produced his other hand from behind his back and offered her the rose clasped within.

"Better late than not at all," he said, glancing quickly between Leliana and Josephine. "Of course, had I known you would be in such lovely company—"

"Then you would have brought two, instead?" Olivia replied, unable to resist the jab.

Everett smirked. "Just so."

She stared at the flower dubiously. Another laden offering? Everyone wanted something, after all. Then again, it was possible she was letting her sour mood colour her expectations. It had been a shaky reunion, but surely if  _she_  felt the strangeness, then he did as well. It was unfair to assume that he wanted anything more than to make amends. Noting his growing impatience, she relented. With a roll of her eyes, and a laugh that she actually found quite genuine, Olivia snatched the thing from his fingers. "I suppose my endorsement wasn't in vain after all. Thank you." He grinned, satisfied.

"So, Knight-Commander, is it?" Leliana began, slipping back into a guarded stance as effortlessly as a well-worn glove. "What is it that brings you to Skyhold? If the word I hear out coming of Starkhaven is true, I wonder that Prince Vael could afford to lose you." Olivia shot Leliana a questioning glance that went unacknowledged, so fixed was she on the templar.

Likewise, Everett's hawkish stare was locked on Leliana, though there was an ease about him that the spymaster lacked. "The lady only assumes me to be lost. I am right where I intend to be. Which is with my sister, of course," he answered. His gaze then drifted back to the younger Trevelyan, and he reached out for her hand. "It would be remiss of me, as a man both duty and faith, not to come and pledge my support. And in trying times such as these, family is  _so_  important. Don't you agree?" The question hung in the air, directed at no one in particular, though it stabbed Olivia true as any blade and any good will earned by his floral offering ebbed out of the wound. She struggled to maintain a stony visage as Everett lifted her hand to kiss the back of it. "In fact, I dare say it should be celebrated. We should hold a feast. I am most  _eager_  to meet my dear sister's comrades. What better way?"

_We?_ she thought, snatching her hand back. "I hardly think it a time for festivities. Two men are recently dead and Cul—" She stopped herself, biting at the fleshy insides of her cheeks, while the outside briefly flushed pink. "With the Commander still…indisposed."

"Ah yes; Commander Cullen of Kirkwall." The same brand of lilting mockery leaked out of him now as had during their quarrel of the night before. "I do admit a certain…professional curiosity regarding the man. His absence will be felt by none so much as I, I can assure you that. But people die and the days march on. Must we  _all_  stop living?" Everett looked then to the ambassador. "Surely the lady ambassador agrees with me?"

"It…has been a trying few days," Josephine answered carefully, "but we also achieved a major victory, and we've many new guests. A feast  _could_  be good for morale." She fired an apologetic look at Olivia, who answered it with a clench-jawed smolder.

"So, it's decided. Tomorrow night, then."

"That's very little notice, brother."

"Oh, Livvy. Dozens of times, in various Circles, have I seen multi-course affairs put together with far less. Unless you mean to suggest that the Inquisition's vast staff is less competent than a handful of  _mages?_ " He laughed.

"Very well," she eked out through her gritted teeth. "I see to the arrangements."

"You can even wear your pretty little dress, if you like." Everett smiled and clapped his hands together. "Now! My dear Lady Montilyet," he said, soused with a repugnant amount of charm, "I dare say you've an ambassadorial duty to grant me a full tour. I've already seen the garden, of course, but please, spare no detail." He grinned. "I wish to see  _everything_."

Josephine stuttered and stammered for a diplomatic refusal, but he was already at her side, ripping her ledger from her hands. He tossed the thing without a care into the pile of gifted finery, then looped his arm around hers and guided her toward the door. The ambassador threw one hesitant glance back as she was ushered out, to which Olivia replied with a smile and a sarcastic wave.

When they were gone, the Inquisitor sighed and settled at the edge of Josephine's desk, her relief at his leaving overcoming her will to stand. "He can be a real arse when he wants to be," she said quietly.

Leliana's eyes never left the closed door. "We will watch him."

"I hardly think that necessary."

"With respect, Inquisitor, I do not trust him."

Olivia laughed. "With respect to  _you_ , Leliana, you don't trust  _anyone_. I'd hardly call that a compelling reason to spy on my brother." The spymaster appraised with a silent askew glance. "You needn't waste resources on him. The only danger he poses is to my pride," she assured her. "He'll be on his way soon enough. Once his ego has been sufficiently stroked, I imagine."

With a sigh, Leliana unfolded her arms. "As you wish." She moved to leave, but Olivia grabbed for her.

"Wait—there is one thing you can do for me. A favour. Personal in nature." Confidence wilting under the spymaster's stare, she exhaled slowly to calm herself. It was a mistake, she feared, accruing such a debt with the Nightingale, but she had little choice. "I do have another brother in the Order. A Knight-Captain, last stationed in Cumberland. Aidan, his name. He seems to have…disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

She nodded. "It's been seven or eight months since anyone heard from him." It was sickening to hear it out loud, more so that it had taken Everett's goading to force her hand on something she could have investigated long ago. Waspish though he may be, there was truth in her brother's sting. "He was in Cumberland for three years, remained there even after the College was dissolved. There was nothing unusual about his last letter, general circumstances notwithstanding. It's unlike him to drop all contact. He was always very good about it. At least two, three letters a year since he entered service, often more."

"And you believe he's—?"

"No," she said instantly; it did not matter how Leliana intended to finish that sentence. But doubt soon caught up with her. "I don't know. I don't want to think that—" Olivia shook her head. "I just need to know, one way or another. If he's dead, or… I need to be sure."

"Very well. I have an agent or two in the area I can spare. We shall see what turns up."

"I appreciate it," she replied, but it was difficult to let relief in all the way. It was a promise to look, but not for results, she reminded herself, and certainly not for peace of mind. "And Leliana, if we could keep this strictly between us? In the event that Aidan has been…compromised… It would be better if that was not common knowledge."

"Of course, Inquisitor."

The Nightingale left her at once, but Olivia sat alone in the hall for a time, dawdling on a dozen inevitabilities. She should go see the Seeker, and try to smooth things over with Varric; and see how the Champion was doing. There were items from the templar bodies to sift through, and arrangements still to be finalised for the remains of their two lost men. Letters to write to the next of kin. _Cullen usually handles that_ , she noted morosely. Part of her wanted to go check on him, but she was not yet ready to face that today. To face herself or what had possessed her to do what she had. Olivia shook her head, shifted focus. Morrigan. She should  _definitely_ make the effort to greet Morrigan. That was probably the thing she most dreaded; that woman was even more disquieting than Leliana. Now there was also Everett and  _his_  stupid feast to deal with. And those were just the things that she could immediately think of.

But her tired bones languished in apathy. Once she set foot outside the confines of the chamber, she was committing to a persona she was did not feel ready to put back on. However, looking around the room, now stinking of dead flowers, she worried that by staying here among all this puffed-up finery she was at risk of being stuffed into a different one she had no desire to wear at all.

As she sat, debating which task she found least odious to begin, the door burst open once more. Her heart sunk at the sound, and she looked up fully expecting her brother returned for another spar. This time, however, it was Cassandra's cacophony, consumed in a righteous storm of cold fury. Olivia jumped to her feet, smoothed the crumpled front of jacket with her idle hands so that she might pass inspection.

"Cassandra," she croaked, then cleared her throat before continuing. "I was just—"

The Seeker scowled. "We have a problem."


	20. Surfacing

It was the eyes he most hated. Fixed and unrelenting. Warm, gilded tones forsaken by a cool glint of candlelight, and empty. Indifferent, but  _judging_. Somehow both shallow and salient, buried under the frown of a scornful snarl. Jagged teeth of gold dripped down into the void of a gaping maw designed to devour him. Pure gold; too soft for armour, too heavy to wear. Pretty, but useless; good only to be put on a pedestal, suffocated under glass. A finely crafted, gaudy effigy of false valour, presented under the flimsy guise of esteem. For the 'Lion of Ferelden'; even the moniker dripped with contempt. The Emperor's message could only be clearer if he had sent a literal collar on golden chain.

"Get rid of it," the Commander muttered, his wounded voice itself a snarl, and shoved the garish helmet away with disdain. It barely moved, the weight of all that gold too much in his current state. He hated it all the more.

"Ser!" The page pounded his fist to his chest in salute, but then hesitated from his attentive stance. "Uh…How…?"

Cullen settled a hard glare upon him. "Take it to the forge and melt it down, for all I care. Just take it, and  _get out_."

There was no pause that time, just scrambling and flushed cheeks as he gathered up the helm and tossed it hastily into the florid wooden box it had come packed in. He hugged the whole lot to his body, knees kicking the underside of the package as his scrawny arms struggled with weight and the ungainliness of it. With another, more half-hearted salute, he turned his heel and scurried for the side door.

As soon as the lad was gone, Cullen released, his weary body falling back into the chair like a sack of sand. The pain was exhausting. Stinging pinpricks in every muscle, like insects under the skin, digging and writhing as they wormed through his flesh. A desperate itch no scratch could reach. He could strip the meat from his bones and never find relief from this madness. There was a weight in his chest, the heaviness of lungs laden with dead air. Short, gasping breaths were not enough to sate him and only worsened the pounding in his head, made his thoughts all cloudy. Memories like broken shards of mirrored glass only cut when he tried to piece them back together. Blood and ash. Fire and smoke. A forest full of haunts. Pain and darkness. Twisted and mangled. The world scarred in red. Deranged.

He lifted his hand to rub at his eyes, but stopped it short to stare. The trembling would not stop. Could not. Would  _never_  stop.

It was the worst it had been since the first days of severing. Back then he had gotten through it the only way he knew how: controlling himself incidentally by controlling everything else directly. But avoidance held diminishing returns. A man could only run for so long before he exhausted, but demons never tired. Now his were set upon him, sunk in to the bone with their frightful teeth. The untreated wounds, a sinister poison on the soul, turning it all to rot. Every wasting muscle in him, every drop of hungry blood cried out for an end. To the pain, to the want. To the nightmares, the fear, the fatigue. To the pretense.

_I am not a templar anymore_. How brazenly he had thrown the words about, a bold declaration of petulant rebellion, never understanding what that truly meant. The life of Cullen Rutherford had been defined from youth by a singular goal. How could he expect to throw that away and carry on like it was nothing?  _He_  was nothing, and no good to anyone like this. No match for those others and what they had become, that much was clear. Those fallen brothers were an aberration, but so was he. Twin blades, fired in the same forge; one sharpened into a keen edge, the other dulled into a piece of scrap. How could he inspire men to battle when he could not defend a simple camp? What business had he leading an army when he could not govern himself?

He glanced at the hardened shell of mud and herbal sludge that caged his arm, the only thing presently holding his broken bones together.  _No shield_. He should have known better. He  _did_. Any recruit who entered his even training yard without his gear would spend the week shovelling in the stables. Was he so arrogant to think himself above all that? The dead should count him among their number. Instead, his life of forfeit dragged on. The bone would heal, in time, but there was that deeper infection he needed to treat.

Even the dullest edge could be made sharp again.

Cullen pulled open the desk drawer. Nostrils flaring, teeth grinding. Sweat on his brow, in his hair, slipping down his neck. He extracted the box and set it down in front of him. This was his life, and it belonged to the Maker. These breaks and bruises, the penance for forsaking his vows. Whatever life he might have imagined outside of the Order was just that; imagined. Selfish and puerile. Why spare him, if not as a warning? He flipped up the lid.

Blessed Andraste greeted him like an old friend, with reminiscences flowing back in a great flood. The first time was awful, and the dozen after, burning up his guts like dire poison. So it was. But as with poison, with each fresh dose he grew a little more immune to the sting. Every sip changed him, made him  _better_ , made him stronger. Blood ran hotter, faith burned truer. A little death. A promised rebirth. It was the fire at the heart, the source of all that he was. The pillars that held up the weight of his solemn purpose. What was he without it? Broken pillars of a broken man, collapsed in on himself. Ash and ruin. It was a different kind of drowning, but now, as then, faith would save him.

_Even as I stumble on the path with my eyes closed, yet I see the Light is here._

That was the moment, at his weakest, at his most vulnerable, and at his most  _sure_ …  _Olivia_. The Seeker was nothing if not predictable.

The room shrank with her in it, became a suffocating prison that strangled him of his conviction. Cullen turned his head away, the war in him escalating, opposing states vying for control. Starved and hungry for the sight of her, he could not bear to lift his gaze. His cold body ached for her caress, longed to revel in her comfort and her grace, but could not suffer the burn. His tortured mind screamed at her to leave him be, but his dogged tongue could not ferry the burden of his voice. The battle tore on, until his frustrated hand curled into a fist and slammed down upon the desk, commanding it all to silence.

Olivia gasped in alarm. "Cullen—!" Breathy, tender, afraid. If a single word was to carry all the weight of her disquiet, it was only fitting that it should be his name. She had reason to be so nervous. "I'm glad to see you up," she said with earnest, then waited, seemingly for him to answer. In the ensuing silence, her expectation withered into doubt, and he heard her weight shift, heard her exhale again, but slowly. "Cassandra said you told her you wanted to quit. She thought you meant command. But you meant something more, didn't you?"

"Does it matter?" He threw her the briefest of glances, and immediately realised the mistake. The wrinkle in her brow, the stern curve of her mouth, the tentative bite on her marred lip. Fine features wrought with concern, stabbing at him, breaking him with lies.

She looked down at the box, then back. "Don't do this."

A harsh laugh fell out of him, cleft from his throat of knives. "Is that an order, Inquisitor?"

Scowling, he sat forward, pushed his hostile body to its leaden feet. At the apex of the rise, he wavered. The room spun; he jammed his eyes shut, fingertips clawed into the leather arm to keep from falling. He heard her moving for him, and stubbornly righted himself and shuffled for the window. Olivia stopped, held her distance. The blast of cool air was a tonic to his nerves, and for a moment, fleeting, he felt his mind clear.

"Why not?" he asked flatly. "It's what you wanted. Remember? I stood here, and you right where you are now. Reckless, you said.  _Foolhardy_. And you were right. I  _was_  a fool. But no longer."

"I know what I said. But I've only ever wanted what's best for you, you know that."

"Best for  _me?_ Or best for  _you_?" He shook his head with a painful scoff. "You must think me an idiot. Think I don't see it? The pity in your eyes. What am I to you but some manged dog you don't have the heart to put out of his misery? How much easier would it be, hm? You must have thought about it. If you could just get me on my leash, tie me up out of the way, you could move on without any inconvenient guilt. That's what you want, isn't it? That's what you said." Cullen shrugged. "Well, here I am. Leash in hand."

"Stop it, Cullen. You know that's not—"

"Stop telling me what I know!"

He turned, fumbling in his trouser pocket until his fingers clasped around the hard edges of glass, then extracted the object and threw it at her feet. It seemed such a small thing. A glint in the dirt, half-buried. Insignificant. Olivia inhaled sharply and took a step back, eyes fixed on the empty vial. The colour drained from her face, and his knees weakened to see it. The hold-out hope that he might be wrong fled with his resolve and he was forced to brace against the wall. It could have been anyone. That was the lie he had wanted to believe. But it couldn't have. It  _had_  to be her. Everything in life had a way of coming back around.

" _You_ know what that is. And where I found it. If you're going to lie to my face, Inquisitor, you should be more careful at my back."

Shaking her head, she said, "It's not what you think. I didn't—"

"Don't lie to me!" he growled. "I can  _taste_  it."

"It spilled, and it burned," she confessed. "But it never touched your lips. I swear it."

Over dozens of debates across the war table, and several, more intimate ones across a chess board, he had grown to know her mannerisms well. Deep in thought, she would bite at her lip and look away, often to the ground; she hated to be seen hesitating, but also did not like to be rushed. When she was feeling particularly insecure about something, she would tongue at inside of her lip, or pick at the callus on her draw finger. Sometimes both. Her bluffs she couched with with strained smiles, closer to winces, as if the very act was painful. Deceit did not come easily to her, and there was no trace of it in her now. Rather, her shining eyes never left him, were neither hard nor uncertain nor distant, offered neither pity nor apology. Only naked, vulnerable truth.

"Though it would have, had circumstances not so conspired. I have no explanation. In that moment, I was somehow sure it was what you needed," she continued gravely. "I don't know where even it came from. I can't…" Olivia trailed off, the crease in her brow deepening. It seemed they were as muddled as each other, visibly grasping for some invisible reason, and it thoroughly eluded her.

Cullen sneered and looked back to the window. She moved again, two quick steps, and he threw out his hand, held it in warning. She obeyed and her advance halted, but her heart poured out of her, unmoved by his command.

"We had tried everything else. Potions, poultices, oils, magic after magic… Every healer in this place had their hands on you, for nothing. You would not wake, even for a moment." Her breath hitched suddenly in her throat, gasped out of her. "Maker's breath, that thing beat you so badly I barely even knew your face…" She swallowed back the knot. "You were dying, Cullen. I think part of you already had. But I couldn't…I couldn't lose you."

The last was a blow to his stomach and he flinched. That she would use such a weapon against him… Anger surged through his blood. Anger and ardour, solace and spite. What did she  _want_ from him? Warm then cold then warm again. Pushing him away with one hand even as the other worked to lure him back, knowing how powerless he was. Could she not let him drown in peace? He faced her in his passion, clarity turning to dross in a mire of disparate pains, corporeal and otherwise. Too many for him to compose any more of a reply than a hot, panting seethe.

The delicate line of her jaw drew square and unyielding. "You were  _dying_ ," she repeated, voice now barely more than a wounded murmur.

"You should have let me," he hissed. As if on cue, the misery in him twisted and jabbed, like the neb of a ravenous scavenger; his body become a living feast for his impulsive ire. Cullen grimaced. It tore and ripped at the meat of his ribs, until his spine could no longer suffer it and he doubled over. Grunting, he sourly added, "I would rather it."

Her own fury flared up; clear, calm waters turned to tempestuous murk. "You would rather be dead?  _Really?_ What should I have done; left you to the wolves? Just left you to rot in the forest like an animal? Would that have been to your satisfaction?" She shook her head vehemently. "Don't you ever say such a thing. I will not hear it."

"Oh, yes, I'm well acquainted with your willfulness, Olivia," Cullen spat. "This was the  _one thing_  that mattered to me. You spurned it as if it was nothing. I suppose to you it was." That laugh came again, contemptible and cruel; it did not hurt any less the second time. "Everything I have been through, you would throw away without a thought and then expect me to be  _grateful._ "

"It was not nothing to me, Cullen," she said, blunted by his tirade. "I care for you. I would never have believed myself capable of… " Olivia looked at her feet; picked at her finger. "I obeyed my fear, where I should have believed in your strength. That's my sin. And I will bear your ire as my lifelong penance. I deserve nothing less. That you stand here proves how wrong I was." She looked up, eyes again clear and shining with fervour. "But you can come back from this. I beg of you, don't make my same mistake."

_You can go back,_ she'd said.  _You are stronger than you think._

He frowned. That ghost from that other life, leaking out into this one. The two of them, mingling together into one body, hazy in his memory. A dozen other thoughts followed after, raining down like arrow fire. Smoke on the horizon. The gloom, parted. Like tent flaps. The infirmary… Fragments of dream and memory started to fall into place. The taste on his tongue, embers of burned lyrium. The smell still in the air when he awoke. Enough to fell a forest. Enough to guide him back from that brink of ruin, to spark the fire at his core. Embers enough to leave him weak, wasted, wanting, but alive. Not so much that he could not come back. He could endure.

Cullen turned, stare falling past her to the desk, to the box, upon the bright blue vial waiting inside. He  _could_  endure. But was that what He wanted?

"I need you to leave," he said hoarsely. "Now."

The fight had abandoned her, all her courage fled and left her mute. A tear rolled off her chin, splashed to the floor. Olivia ceded with a nod, wiped the wet trail from her cheek and turned to go. At the door, she paused. "I'll send up food, and a nurse to splint your arm," she promised.

Alone again, Cullen went to his knees. No more pretense. Groaning, teeth grinding against the ache, he dragged himself along the stone to the desk, where he slumped. The trifling distance left him panting. So weak... If he could come back from this, he thought, then surely he could come back from a little more. It need not be much. Just a taste to get through this night. The spark was there. If he could only build a fire enough to warm him through...

He reached over his head, feeling about for the case, and slipped a finger inside to drag it. The box found the edge of the desk and tumbled, component parts spilling and clattering across the floor. The one remaining philter landed just at arm's reach.

_Who knows me as you do_ , he chanted wearily, stretching for it.  _You have been there since my first breath._

Bungling fingers latched onto the slippery vial, then brought it quickly to his lips. Teeth wrapped around the stopper, dug in to the pliable cork, poised to pull. Its siren song, a luring hum, vibrated in his bones. Old, familiar tingling. A ripple of anticipatory goosebumps.

_You have seen me when no other…_

… _when no other would…_

… _recognise my face…_

There was a moment at the end. A point of no return. A feeling; some inherent  _knowing_  that he must either commit or retreat. The last step was heavy, and final. The black void waited to swallow him.

_You have composed the cadence of my heart._

Shaking hand. Hungering blood. One last breath to hold him as he went under. Then, with a yell, and every last ounce of strength that he could muster, he reared back his arm and pitched the vial against the wall, where it bloomed into a shimmering stain of blue and a shower of broken glass.

Relief wept out of him in heavy tears, in desperate, gasping sobs that first voided and then filled his lungs, suddenly open and clear as the dead weight lifted from his chest.

Sometimes, the thing a drowning man needed most was just the faith that he would breathe again.  


* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Official anthem of this chapter:- Hunger by Of Monsters and Men. 
> 
> I do so hate it when they fight.


	21. Bridging

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived near the sea. Deep in the night, when sleep refused to tarry, she would lay awake in her bed and look out across the blackness, counting stars. There was another light, too near, too bright, too low upon the horizon for any heavenly gleam. Rather, it belonged to the beacon, burning brightly at the tip of Brandel's Reach, flaring its warning across the pitch waters.  _Woe be unto any who venture near_ , it flashed.  _For only death lurks here_ . In the lonely quiet of her crowded house, she would lay and ponder the life of the resident flamekeeper. How did he come to his lot? Was it by choice, or by some other turn of fate, that he ended upon the desolate Reach? And did he relish in the solitude? Or did he feel a prisoner of his solemn duty? Set apart from the world, an island upon and island, bound forever to his mark of flame, with the lives of many incumbent on his solitary vigil…

She did not wonder anymore.

Knuckles poised against the wood, she loitered, stomach in knots. At a time when it felt the Hold held few friendly faces, the idea of being alone left her cold. It would not matter, then, if the company itself was a little frigid. If only Dorian had not drunk himself to a stupor…Though she might have joined him in it, was it not for reluctance to seed a habit. Hypocrisy was quick enough becoming a crutch; no need to further poison the pot. Thus, with a determined breath pushed through pursed lips, she gave a rap on the wood. A muffled voice bid she enter and she did, closing the door quickly behind her before she had a chance to shrink.

In a small pool of candlelight, Varric sat on the floor, one knee drawn up to rest his papers on as he scribbled. He threw her a quick nod, neither friendly nor otherwise, merely an acknowledgement before returning to his pages. His candle and another lamp by the bed were the only splashes of light in an otherwise gloomy space not even moonlight could reach. The Champion was coiled asleep, fully covered by blanket, barring a spill of decidedly cleaner-looking red curls tumbling over the mattress. The woman twitched and whimpered, but otherwise appeared fully consumed by her slumber.

Rubbing at her folded arms and bouncing on the balls of her feet, Olivia glanced about the room. It was not a pretty room, tucked in a secluded recess off the garden, and until recently had been used for storage. A pile of wood remained in the corner, leftover from work that had been abandoned weeks ago. The furniture was old or broken; a table keeled over on three legs, a splintered stool beside; a dented chamber pot and a wash basin barely held together by rusting iron bands. The bed appeared sturdy, though the fresh linens were jarring against the film of grime all over everything. Vines crept along the wall, and meltwater trickled down the stone from somewhere high above. The damp air had a smell like an old grotto. It was a room of refuse. Marcy said the Champion had chosen it for herself.

"Would you sit down already? You're freaking me out," Varric muttered.

Gladly, she put her back to the wall and eased down to the floor beside him, knees screaming as she sunk. Age was quickly catching her up, and some days she felt a dozen years older than she had six months ago. Once settled, she craned her neck to peek over his scratching quill hand. In the dimness, she could comprehend little.

"New book?" she probed. It seemed the best way to bridge the silence.

The dwarf smiled slyly. "It is, in fact. Maybe even a whole series. The gritty adventures of one Cayce Pendragon, a hard-ass former soldier, haunted by her infamous past. Retires from service, becomes a hired sword. She's brash and hot-headed, her methods are… _questionable_. Has a knack for making enemies. Some shit happens, I don't know, I haven't figured it all out yet. What I  _do_  know is that eventually she's going to cross paths with a beguiling qunari spy, and find herself interminably tempted by his…horns." Varric sighed. "The only man savage enough to tame the savage in her."

The Inquisitor snorted. "Oh, Varric," she said, stifling the ensuing giggles behind her hand. "She's going to kill you."

"What can I say? She inspired me," he replied, glancing at her from beneath an angry purple welt that weighed dark upon his already heavy brow. "Besides, the good Seeker is just naive enough to miss the joke completely."

"For your sake, I hope you're right." Olivia shook her head, clearing her throat of mirth's dregs. "Thank you. I needed that."

"Uh oh." His hand stopped moving, and he looked at her in earnest. "Wanna talk about it? Keeping in mind, I polished off the last of the whiskey a couple hours ago."

She arched her back from the wall to stretch a frustrating niggle at the base of her spine. One of a dozen such ghostly pains that kept jabbing and moving about, like a rock in her boot. Dissatisfied, she gave up on it, and her attention fell to her hand upon her knee. All at once, it came to her how it had looked that night in Orlais, slipped inside of  _his_. She recalled the hardness of his callused palm, and the gentleness of his hold. Timid almost, and clammy, from his glove or his nerves. That heady musk of him, sweet and earthy, like fresh sage and evergreens, fur pelts and hot summer rains. He need not have been so fretful; the only one in danger of breaking anything was Olivia herself.

"No," she answered absently. "I'm just…tired. What I wouldn't give for even a single day away from all of this. Ride with no destination in mind. Hunt, maybe. Spend a few hours as someone else. Someone without a care."

"So do it. You've earned it. World won't end if you take a few hours to yourself now and a again. So long as you intend to come back, of course. You have some fans around here, might get a little antsy."

She shrugged. "Maybe."

"Pfft. Don't give me that 'maybe' crap." Varric smiled, put his quill and papers aside. The knuckles cracked as he flexed his fingers, clearly glad for the break. "Thing is, you can't run from things forever. I've tried. And every time I think shit can't get any worse, it does. Suddenly that last thing didn't seem so bad after all."

"So I'll feel better everything inevitably gets worse? How uplifting."

The dwarf shrugged. "It's like how people say 'we'll laugh about this later.' Sometimes, that's even true. It's just perspective."

"Perspective," she echoed, and then chuckled softly, though not at her current woes. "When I was young, when the rains would arrive in the spring, I would sit at the window watching the yard turn to slop, and moan ceaselessly about how I couldn't play outside. My father does not believe in boredom. He would rattle off a list of things to do. Chores, mostly. Or chase after my sisters. Precisely what I hoped to avoid." The laugh settled into a pensive smile. "I would whine more, of course. And he would fold his arms and ask, rather pointedly, 'What if the sun never shone again, Livvy? Would you spend your whole life staring out the window, waiting?' And I never did have an answer for him."

The Bann's face in her memory seemed to come back fuzzier all the time.  _Is this what death feels like?_ she wondered morbidly. Life slipping away, piece by tiny piece, like grains of sand on the tide? The Inquisitor had revealed to her a great many things, but above all had made her keenly aware of the transience of life. How temporary it all was. Death was no longer some abstract idea or smug inevitability. It was a punctuation point that could be dropped in at any time, even mid-sentence. Her old life, her father's face, those were the abstracts now. The longer she remained here, the less likely it seemed that she would ever see them again. There was an ephemeral moment of dread before she opened each letter from home, then a swell of relief at seeing his hand on the page. Those letters were too brief, too impersonal. It did not pay to say anything that could not be risked falling into the wrong hands. In such volatile times, even a simple 'I miss you' could be used as a weapon. That's what the Nightingale said, how she justified screening all of Olivia's correspondence. She could only hope that the things she did not write came through as clearly.

"The funny thing is, after enough days of rain," she said quietly, "you almost forget how the world looks, bathed in sun."

"Doesn't mean you stop looking for it," Varric shot back.

He peered then to the bed, his eyes as distant as Olivia's thoughts, and she realised at once how little she knew of him. When everyone else had condemned her, he was the first to extend his hand in camaraderie, but who  _was_  Varric Tethras? A merchant? A writer? An elaborate work of fiction? How much did she really know any of them, for that matter? Even Cullen kept things from her. It might have been foolish to expect anything more than alliances of convenience. They all had other lives once. Friends and families, people they left behind either by choice or otherwise. Things they wished to escape from, things they would give anything to escape back to. What would become of them when all of this was over?

"She's going to be all right," she said. It was a flimsy offering, set adrift in the silence and buoyed by naught but vain hope. Hawke had to be all right;  _had_  to.

"Yeah. Sure," he answered. "You know, I found  _nine_  empty vials in her pouch. Had to give her the last one just to settle her down enough to sleep."

Olivia winced. On the battlements she had been so dismissive, so callous and insensitive. Judgemental, even. A day later, she found that her higher ground had all but eroded out from underneath her, been coughed up in a plume of bitter blue smoke. "I'm sorry. I know how hard that was."

"Gets a lot easier to do the things you don't want to when your options run out." Varric shrugged. "I don't know if it was the lyrium making her paranoid, or paranoia making her take the lyrium, but I'm pretty sure it was the only thing keeping her going the last few days. Think it's a long time since she felt safe. But I don't know what's gonna happen when she wakes up."

"She is safe here," the Inquisitor promised.

"Yeah." He reclined, groaning with his old bones. The Champion's pained whimpers punctuated the quiet, and with each one, Varric flinched. "Could be it's for the best she came when she did. Maybe we can, I dunno…fix her."

_Does Hawke even know she's broken?_  she wondered idly. They all were in some way. Sometimes the breaks were willing, and there was purpose in the scars. Even if Varric meant well, good intentions made for poor mortar, and love's most enduring power was in turning sages into fools. Olivia glanced at her hand and remembered how it had looked, slick and shimmering with betrayal. There was nothing she would not do to save Cullen's life, and so she had. In doing so, he was lost to her, while she remained every bit the fool, tortured by the things she never had a chance to say. But Olivia kept those thoughts to her breast. Too raw yet were her wounds to bear giving that shame a voice.

"It's funny how people come into your life," he said. "You don't even think about it. They're just  _there._ Like…like furniture. You get used to them, expect 'em to be a certain way. Feel lost if they aren't where they should be." His eyes narrowed then. It was the look of a man attempting to furnish a vast, empty space with only memories of what it once had looked like. "A few years ago, Hawke's mother died. Asshole blood mage was killing women for years in the city. You hear about that, out in Ostwick? I didn't put it in the book. Didn't seem right to. I left out a lot, come to think of it. Or just plain made it up."

Olivia pondered, but soon shrugged. "There were always strange rumours about Kirkwall, but I don't recall anything like that. That's…alarming."

"Yeah. Doubt the Chantry wanted it getting around. At any rate, we tracked him down. Too late, of course." Varric took a steeling breath and shook his head. "All that magic at her fingertips, but when time came, she didn't use any of it. Took out a knife, and put it right through the bastard's heart. Needed to  _feel_ it, she said. Shit, I still remember the look on her face. Scariest damned thing I've ever seen."

Olivia glanced at her hand and remembered how it had looked, bathed in blood. Remembered the choking, gurgling, hot mess of steam. Remembered the terror, and the anger, and the satisfying push of the blade as it ended the life of the thing that nearly ended his.

"Don't get me wrong," Varric continued, "that prick got what he deserved. Got  _better_. It's just…she wasn't the same after that. Leandra was the last bit of real family she had left, besides her deadbeat uncle, but he didn't give two shits about her. Hawke and I, we'd been through so much, kinda felt like we  _were_  family, ya know? But she pulled away. Wouldn't ever talk about what happened. Closed herself off from almost everyone. Stopped needing me quite so much. I'm not too proud to admit that, well; part of me just likes to be needed."

Offering a sympathetic smile, she said the only thing she could think to. "I'm sorry, Varric."

"Oh, sure. 'Cause  _you_  don't need me either." He chuckled and nudged her gently with his elbow. "I dunno. I always thought the idea that someone could change that much was bullshit. People are who they are. If they surprise you, well, maybe you didn't know 'em so well in the first place." Varric shrugged. "Not so sure about that anymore."

"People change as much as they need to get by," Olivia replied. "Some things are just harder to come back from."

"I guess. But that's hindsight for ya. If I'd known back then how things would end up, I would've tried harder. Maybe if she'd turned to  _me_  instead of Anders, well…shit." Scratching at his stubbly chin he said, more morosely, "Hawke's life turned to crap the day I picked her up in Hightown. She just didn't know it yet."

Instinctively, Olivia's hand, the author of so much heartache, slipped from her knee and settled inside of Varric's palm. He grunted and looked away, but a moment later his squat fingers twitched closed. It was a noncommittal hold, neither friendly nor otherwise. Merely an acknowledgement. There they sat, a pair of desolate islands, straining to maintain a connection amid a mounting sea of sorrow and regret. The morrow would be upon them soon enough. All of today's ghostly pains would spill over, and though some would fade, those that remained would be joined by fresh ones by new day's end. An ongoing cycle, as sure as the seasons, as sure as the tide.

Varric growled to disguise a sniffle and shook his head. "I told you I was out of whiskey; why'd you let me go on like that?"

She smiled. "Honestly? It's just nice to know I'm not the only wreck."

"Not even close." He gave her hand a squeeze. "Don't worry, Sprinkles. It can't rain every day."


	22. Hunting

_Run, little rabbit;_  
to the warren with haste.  
The huntsmen are coming;  
not a moment to waste!

     Run, little rabbit;  
     the hound has your scent.  
     He howls and he hungers,  
     and will not relent.

          Run, little rabbit;  
          the hound nips at your heels.  
          He growls and he lunges,  
          and delights in your squeals.

               Run, little rabbit;  
               too slow, too late.  
               His teeth are upon you…  
                Your blood seals your fate.

                        — _from_ Venison and Verse: The Pensive Hunter's Companion,   
_by the hunter Maxwell Derry, self-proclaimed 'Scourge of the Dales'_

* * *

  
Two deep breaths to hold her; one for the head, one for the heart. Eyes locked on the thicket, on something she cannot see, only senses. Another breath, she raises the bow.  _Still mind, still arm._ The old mantra still rings true. She voids herself of distractions. The world falls away into quiet, colours fade into a grey blur at the edges of her vision. The only sound she hears is her blood, pounding through veins her like some wild beast, hungry for a kill. She waits for its snarling to settle. Time slows to a crawl; she has as much of it as she needs and not a second more. In another breath, she draws; holds it.  _Still mind, still arm_ . It's a familiar tension, finger to forearm, elbow to shoulder. Every muscle taut and working in unison with the next. Satisfying, like the first stretch after a long sleep. She sets anchor upon her scar and takes aim.  _Out_ ; lungs slowly deflate _. Ready_. One more breath in and—

"Time to go, Inquisitor."

Her head twitches at the sound. The anchor is adrift, but her fingers too far gone. The loosed arrow whirs into the thicket, offset by a small fraction that by flight's end has grown into an error of more than an inch. A giant snowshoe bounds out of the bushes unscathed, scurries up the hill and disappears in a panicked puff of white.

"Shit," Olivia muttered. Her arm dropped to her side with the ponderous disappointment of unfulfilled promise.

Some twenty paces away, Braeden leaned lazily against a tree; hovering, as he had all day. He shrugged, unapologetic. "We're losing daylight."

"Best time for it," she answered, already scanning the hillside for a fresh position. The ridge to the west, where the ground had eroded away years ago; now thick with overgrowth and rotted out, fallen trees. A perfect hiding place for small game. "Another hour."

"We should've been off an hour  _ago._ One more and it'll be pitch. I ain't spending the night in the woods getting fondled by bears or brontos or what-have-yous just so's you can have a little bit of fresh air.  _With respect_."

She laughed at the last part.

The whole day, he had done little but mope and glower, stomp about and huff interminably with a boredom he would not let her forget. Now, Braeden did not move, did not speak, only stared at her, silent and imperious. So like a Templar. Fingers flexing anxiously around the grip, she endured his gaze as she had all along, with her own sullen silence. Only now reality was bleeding back in. With it came the great cacophony of her hastening heart, frantic at the battle she was losing. She was not ready to go back and face it all again. A little more time, that's all she wanted. A little more time to feel something,  _anything,_  other than the sucking emptiness cutting away at her from the inside-out.

But there was no more time.

It had been a foolish to believe that she might actually escape, not even for the day, as Varric had suggested. Even more ridiculous to think that she had any agency at all, when apparently she could not even leave Skyhold unattended.  _Standing orders,_  Braeden said. They were barely an hour down the mountain; still within regular patrol range. He would hear none of her protests. For her  _protection_ , he said. She tried not to be resentful, but put a woman in shackles, and then ask her how safe she feels when the iron bites at her heels.

She nodded slowly and then, accepting of her fate, slung her bow over her shoulder. Satisfied, Braeden unfurled his arms and set off down the hill without further discussion. Olivia fell obediently into the tracks he made. The wind stung at her eyes; a convenient excuse for the wetness that blurred her sights.

"Be glad to be out of this blessed forest. Freezing my arse off."

Though he proudly owned his Ferelden heritage to any who would listen, Braeden had served in the Free Marches most of his life and seemed ill-acclimated to his motherland. Olivia, on the other hand, barely felt the cold anymore.

He swore loudly then, staggering forward as his foot caught in a hidden root beneath the snow. "Watch it," he snarled, pointing. She was not sure if the warning was for her, or a threat against the root itself; the latter seemed the more likely.

Braeden was not a young man, pushing on his late fifties, she guessed, and of an unimposing stature—soft, even, around the middle, where his armour bulged gently outward. If a person's whole being could be reduced to a single descriptor, his would be 'coarse'. Everything about him was, from the wiry hair that came through in patches upon his head and weather-beaten face, to the boorish language that fell with frequency from his lips and his grudging deference to authority. Much of what he said came through as a barely concealed insult, and it was impossible to be certain if he intended it that way or was simply ignorant to it. Neither possibility afforded her much comfort. It was little wonder that, in spite of his age and years of service, he had failed to advance beyond Lieutenant, assuming he even possessed the ambition. He seemed the kind of man content to drift with the flow of the river, all the while moaning at it for not moving fast enough. As escorts went, if she was to have her pick, Braeden would not even make the shortlist. One—or both—of them had pulled a short straw this day.

"Never saw the appeal in hunting," he said as they came upon the clearing where they'd left the horses. "Duller than dishwater, twice the mess. Best left to someone else."

 _Sounds like a life philosophy,_  she thought, but pushed out a polite smile as her fingers worked the knot in the lead rope. "It isn't for everyone."

"Odd amusement for a woman," Braeden mused, fussing with his own knots. He cursed under his breath and blew on his ungainly fingers to warm them before trying again. "Well, maybe not for you Marcher women. Rougher than boar's guts, most of you, is my experience. A night in a Markham whorehouse is a fine way to get your cock bit off and not much else. Hardly worth the silver, you ask me."

Olivia could not fathom how she was supposed to respond to such a declaration; a disgusted scowl seemed as fitting as anything. Gathering the lead as she went, she guided her horse to the track they had followed in and mounted at once, suddenly eager to get underway. A glance at the sky over the clearing revealed heavy cloud building. After a fair day, it felt appropriate that the ride back up the mountain should coincide with blackening, stormy skies.

"Daddy teach you?" Behind, she heard grunting and yet more swearing as he swung his bulk up and settled into the saddle.

"My  _father_ , yes," she answered, not bothering to look back to see that he was ready before setting off. He would catch up. Regrettably. And soon did.

"Must've been quite a teacher," he said. "I mean, I ain't much of an expert, but you seem to know a little about what you're doing. Even if you've nothing to show for it today." Olivia gave a bitter laugh, but Braeden did not allow her time to dwell on or address her offence. "And your brother…you two ever hunt together?"

"Everett? Not at all." As she ducked under a low hanging branch, a part of her hoped he would not see it in time. When she did not hear more boorish utterances a moment later, she shrugged and continued. "He was away most of my life. Besides, I cannot recall him ever showing interest in it."

Braeden gave a hearty laugh at that. Olivia fidgeted about in her saddle uncomfortably, unable to find the amusement in anything she had said.

"What's so funny?" she snapped.

Quashing his laughter under a cough, the Knight-Lieutenant drew his horse alongside and cast a spurious look her way. "Forgive me, Inquisitor, but you must  _know…?"_  She stared blankly, and Braeden appeared perplexed, even irritated by her ignorance. "There's not been a hunter of your brother's like in years, not that I know of."

"Braeden, what one earth are you—" She fell abruptly silent as a grim realisation struck her. "Mages," she gasped.

"Like he can smell the magic on them. Sniff 'em out in all their little hidey-holes." He chuckled. "Got to have collared a couple hundred of them in his time, I reckon. At least. Even got himself a little nickname. Call him 'The Lymer'. Buggered if I know what it's about, though."

"A dog," Olivia said, quietly processing. "For tracking large game."

"Huh. Well. There ya go."

The claim made little sense to her. Everett himself was hardly modest; how could he keep such a reputation to himself? And she had known plenty of knights over the years; if not from Everett, surely she would have heard something from one of them. She shook her head. "You must be mistaken."

Braeden shook his head, too, only more adamantly. "Only met him the one time, 'round ten years back. You never forget a man like that, though. See, we had a spot of trouble with a little knife-ear bastard and his friend of his. Scaled a wall and jumped out a window in the middle of the night. To this day, can't figure how. Blighted mages, ay? Twenty feet of sheer stone up, thirty-five of jagged stone down the other side. Straight into the shit-filled canal. Figured them for dead, but there weren't any bodies. Wouldn't be though, would there, after a fall like that? Be a bloody stain, that's more like. But we never found one of them either."

She winced at his colourful description.

"Anyhow, he happened to be passing through a day or so later. Heard of what happened, of course. Fucking templars. Worse than granny's knitting circle; nothin' ever stays secret. Anyhow, The Lymer, he hears about what happened, and he's not convinced. Took their phylacteries and off he went. We all thought him mad. Wasn't gonna find anything." Braeden tugged at the scruffy hairs on his chin, shrugging. "Well, wouldn't you know it, not five days later he was back, little elf prick and his mate in tow. Plus some other apostate wench he'd found by accident along the way. Ran 'em down halfway to Hercinia. Knife-ear and the other one were both beaten halfway to next week. Don't know how they survived that fall in the first place, let alone made it far as they did in the state they were in. Little bastards probably thought they were home free." Braeden laughed until he was almost wheezing. "The Lymer fixed 'em up, all right. 'Cause that what he does."

The knight told his story with an uncommon reverence, more than she had heard him regard anyone, even the Commander. He gave her a smile that suggested she ought be impressed, perhaps even  _proud_  to hear of her brother's supposed exploits. Olivia felt nothing of the sought.

"All your story demonstrates," she began coolly, "is his ability to perform a task so elementary that  _any_  templar with the same training could have undertaken it." She gave him a pointed look. "Had they been so inclined."

The Knight-Lieutenant regarded her criticism with an icy silence.

Still, even in dismissing it, she found his tale haunting. As she looked up the mountain, at the vague outline of Skyhold nestled among the darkening rock, a quickening chill clutched around her unsteady heart. That sinking, sucking, twisting darkness still eating away at her insides. More than ever, what she wanted to do was turn around and run.

"Think whatever you like, Inquisitor," Braeden muttered. "I know what I know. Day's gonna come that whatever arrangement you have with the robes now, it won't mean shit. They'll turn. Always do. And we're gonna need men like The Lymer more than ever, you ask me."

Most certainly, she did not.


	23. Feasting

Biting winds and heavy snow choked the dregs of life from the day, and night had long descended by the time they reached the gate. A single guard came out to greet them as they dismounted. The rest, having taken shelter from the cold inside the gatehouse, were gathered around a table, laughing over a hand of cards and a round of ale. The guard took the horses and headed for the stable, and Braeden stood shaking the snow from his hair and beard, observing her in his periphery with the same stony silence that had carried them up the mountain. With a gesture bearing only a passing resemblance to a salute, he wordlessly excused himself from her service, wasting not a moment in finding a stool and a mug at the card game inside. Olivia was just as glad to be rid of him.

The yard sat eerily empty, camouflaged under an inch of snow that was untouched bar for the guard's fresh tracks. Not since the first day of their arrival had she seen the Hold so desolate. The infirmary was silent, the merchants' stalls barren. It was as if everyone had packed up and left all at once, leaving Olivia the lone ghost left to haunt the bones. A glance up at the looming shadow of the Great Hall on the rock revealed the truth.

The windows glinted like the eyes of some monstrous fiend; the doors ajar, pursed lips panting its fiery breath into the frigid dark. Over the whine of the winter wind came the low rumble of voices, hundreds of them; the last meal, trapped inside the belly of that terrible beast. Everett's feast waited on no one. She recalled at once his dispassionate declaration of the day before.  _People die, and the days march on._  Except she was not dead, yet. It paid to remind herself, from time to time.

Sunk down into the hood of her coat, arms folded to keep the snow at bay, she made a dash across the yard, mindful of the icy stone and a throbbing ache in her leg from a careless slide down an embankment earlier in the day. The right side of her pants was scuffed and filthy, stained with a few dark spots of blood. Hair a mess from the ride, her face whipped red and raw by winter, she was not fit to be seen by company. The twisted flesh at her jaw always turned livid in the cold.

The wind that had ravaged her now carried a song of mocking laughter from above. Louder and louder as she rose, until at the top of the steps, she stalled. Dizzy. Tongue tacky against the roof of her barren mouth. Pressure swelling inside her empty stomach. Discordant rhythm battering in her chest. Air thick in her lungs like water. These spells of panic grew more visceral each time they hit. She closed her eyes tightly, until stars danced in the blackness, focused on her shallow breaths and imagined herself back in the forest. Trees all around her, lush and tall and ageless. There was no biting wind, no raucous shrieking. Only snowflakes falling gently to the earth. She imagined a mighty hart standing amid the trees, hoofing and snuffing at the ground as he grazed. Hoarfrost caught in the velvet of his massive antlers and in the delicate lashes around his inky eyes. Majestic. Powerful. Olivia reached out, feeling for the handle of the Great Hall door. Two deep breaths to hold her.  _Out._  Her laden lungs slowly deflated. Another breath in…  _Ready._ She forced herself inside.

Far removed from that peaceful forest, the scene before her was a coordinated assault on all of her senses. The rumble from across the yard was only a remnant of a thundering roar that she could feel from her toes to the fine hairs on her neck. The room was hot and packed with bodies. It seemed most of the Hold had sought solace here from winter's wrath. Soldiers and mages, clergy and nobles, merchants and peasants; every table was full, and heaped with lavish platters of cheeses, breads, smoked meats and fruit—whatever could be thrown together on such little notice. Those who could not sit stood in large groups, laughing and cajoling. The air smelled keenly of mulled wine and ale, and servants dashed about at a mad clip keeping cups full. Though the room sung with revelry, Olivia could not help but think on the last time she had seen the hall so crowded. That day had ended in an execution. Tonight, she hoped, would tread a different path.

Safe beneath her shroud, she shouldered her way through. For every familiar face she spotted, there were five she did not recognise at all. A few stopped her with greetings, or incomprehensible garbling, but she kept moving forward, for the dais and the table that sat upon it. Swathed in crimson damask, draped in ivory banners emblazoned with Inquisition heraldry, it was set apart not only by position but also flourish. Appointed with elaborate floral bouquets and trinkets of gleaming gold—golden goblets and candelabras, golden bowls and jewelled decanters—it called to mind the Winter Palace and the gross facade she had been made to wear. Of Gaspard's false flattery and his disingenuous advances. But that was not the most egregious offence. In the midst sat Inquisitor's throne, its crown of blackened iron blades pierced at the heart of all that affluence like a gruesome executioner's centrepiece, made more perverse by the fact that it was occupied.

Her brother reclined, sagged boorishly into it with a leg draped over the armrest, presenting himself to the room as a ruttish pheasant might, posturing for attention. His eyes drifted about lackadaisically as he spoke, as if there was not a thing in the place worthy of more than a moment's notice. Olivia pushed down her hood as his gaze made its way around, and he paused mid-sentence when he caught sight of her. A smile haunted his lips for just a beat or two before he carried on, undaunted.

Spurred by her ire, she pushed on with haste until she reached and mounted the steps. Three men stood with her approach; Blackwall, Dorian, and the Commander in the last setting. A soft gasp caught in her throat at the sight of him. His broken arm, freshly splinted, hung limp in a sling inside the folds of his cloak; his brow, still deeply bruised and creased into heavy furrows. He offered her only a pained glance, a hollow courtesy, before bowing his head away and resuming his seat.

Everett extended no such gesture. "Ah, Livvy, you came after all. Did they not teach you about tardiness in the Chantry, sister? Or is it a bad habit you've picked up in these southern wilds?"

"You're in my seat," is all she said.

"Are you sure? I mean, it  _was_  empty," he replied with a laugh. "Finders, keepers."

It was clear that he expected her to relent. Everett Trevelyan was a man accustomed to getting his way. But a part of Olivia remained in the forest. She emptied herself of the heartache of Cullen's face, the throbbing in her wounded thigh, the residual dread of her arrival. It occurred to her briefly that he might be doing the same. All her life, she had considered herself apart from her siblings, but now she understood that was only different from her sisters. The Bann had raised her as he had all his sons. The same lessons handed down to Warner and Owen, then again to Everett and Aidan before her. Preparing them all for what was to come. To the elder two, he taught leadership; Warner would govern the Bannorn someday, with Owen his second. For the younger three, he had been instilling the discipline and self-reliance they would need the day he inevitably sent them away.

This was the moment, staring down her own kin, that she at last appreciated all he had given her. It was easy to stand against a monster; it was harder to stand up for oneself. But patience was hers. All but the last few seconds of the hunt amounted to waiting. She had exactly as much time as she needed. The same could not be said for Everett. His agitation wore through in his faltering smile, in his restlessness. The adversarial attentions of a half-dozen others were keenly turned upon him, until, at last he broke. With an uneasy laugh, he pushed his body upright, holding his open palm to the vacant throne as he stood. Perhaps he had learned a thing or two from their father, after all, for knowing how to track a quarry was sometimes less important than knowing when to let it go.

Olivia promptly sat, grimacing at the warmth of the seat beneath her. "I apologise," she said, looking down the line of faces, and invariably, drawn back to Cullen. Drawn as she always had been, as it seemed she always would.

He appeared weary, wan and varnished with sweat. Dark circles hung under his eyes and he tugged frequently at the sling about his neck. Undoubtedly sensing her watching him, he kept his own gaze up and out, looking over the room in his knightly way. Seeing everything, except the one thing he refused to acknowledge. Holding a vigil over the anger that still burned hotly in his eyes. Cassandra eyed him just as closely, and she wondered if the Seeker was the reason he was here at all. Whatever the reason, plainly it was not for her.

The pain in her chest was too much to bear, and she soon looked away. "It was a slower ride up than anticipated," she added weakly.

Rather than take up one of the empty chairs, Everett opted to lean at her elbow. "We've been growing acquainted as we waited. A diverse group you have. I understand this isn't even half of them. Did I hear correctly? You've an  _ox-man_  in your employ?"

"You should meet him, brother." Olivia reached for a piece of cheese from one of the overstuffed platters and nibbled on it dubiously. Despite having not eaten for several hours, her stomach presently scorned the prospect of food. "He's always looking for a good spar."

Dorian chuckled into his mug, which deftly drew Everett's steely attention. "Which brings me to the, perhaps even greater, aberration here," he said gravely. There was a tense moment of silence before he issued one of his crooked, thin-lipped smiles. "To think of it! Mages, Templars, Seekers, breaking bread at the same table. What an age we live in."

"Is this a jest?" Cassandra spat, "or do you actually disapprove?"

He huffed. "Even you must admit it's unorthodox."

"That's where you're wrong, brother," the Inquisitor said with a shrug. "There are neither Templars nor Seekers here. Only Inquisition. The mages too." She forced a smile of her own as she eyed him sharply. "The days of segregation are over."

"How romantic of you, sister."

Vivienne was the next to speak up. "You still identify as a Knight-Commander of the Order, do you not?" she asked. Exuding a far more regal confidence than the Inquisitor could muster, even on her elaborate throne; the enchanter seemed perfectly in her element, placed upon a pedestal before all of Skyhold's denizens. "Despite having no Circle over which to preside, that is."

"I identify as 'Knight-Commander', because that is what I  _am._ Not  _currently_  of a Circle, as you say, but of the army of Starkhaven. Answering directly to His Royal Highness Prince Sebastian Vael, most loyal and humble servant of our Blessed Andraste." His hawk-like features drew severe. "He works tirelessly to see order restored. I serve with the same faith. In the end, we must all still answer to the Maker."

"How very true. Can I infer from your language, then, that you wish—and perhaps wholly expect—to see Chantry rule fully restored?"

He glanced quickly to Cassandra the end of the table. "There is always room for improvement. But the Circles? Of course. Unquestionably."

Vivienne smiled. "An unpopular opinion, that. But one I happen to agree with."

"Opinions become popular because they are easy for fools to agree with," Everett laughed. "I don't concern myself with such things. But it would appear you are no fool, enchanter. Would that all mages were so tame."

Olivia made an audible grunt of disgust at his wording. "'Tame', brother? These are  _people_  you're talking about, not animals."

"They are not people, Livvy," he said bluntly, to a round of dubious looks. Even Vivienne's cool countenance subtly cracked. "Of course, they are not animals, either, but they are something quite  _other_. A step beyond us. The pivotal link, if you will, in the chain tethering us to the world of demons. Their power is a gateway to our destruction. It would be reckless to leave such a door unguarded."

"And the only answer is to go back to imprisoning them for abject fear of what some of them  _might_  do? That is exactly what led us to war in the first place," she argued. "Marginalise any group—mages, elves, the peasantry,  _whomever_ —and deprive them of basic liberties, you always invite rebellion. And rebellion always leads to bloodshed in the end. History has proved it, time and again."

"You're focusing on the wrong part, Livvy. The point is that rebellion does  _end_  with bloodshed. Petty upstarts are crushed every day. And do you know how? With leadership, and unyielding authority. So no, sister, I don't agree with you at all. What led us to war was not faulty ideology but poor enforcement of it. Rhetoric makes for pretty works of fiction, but in the real world, the only way to answer a threat is to eliminate the source. Not to coddle the malcontents." He looked to the end of the table. "You must agree, Commander. You had troubles in Kirkwall for years before the rebellion. It could have been extinguished well prior had your hands not been tied, wouldn't you say?"

"No," Cullen answered promptly. His drawn features grew stark, his stare distant with faraway thoughts. It seemed for a moment that he would offer no more on the matter. "Our hands were never tied," he added, injured voice low but severe. Raw; not just from his physical hurts. "If anything, problems in the Gallows might have been avoided with more restraint. And you seem to forget that an apostate was responsible for the cataclysm. Not one of ours."

"Apostates only remain apostates if they are permitted to, Commander. If your hands were not tied, then what  _were_  they  _doing?_ " Everett laughed again. How Olivia was growing to hate that sound. "Besides, the beast  _was_  a Circle mage, at one time. From right here in Ferelden, as I understand it. The same Circle you hailed from, in fact."

The bruising made Cullen's glare much darker than usual. "What are you insinuating?"

"My, you are a defensive one," the elder Trevelyan said with a grin. "Of course, I mean no injury to your pride, Commander. Facts are facts. I'm simply making a point. The mage was a known troublemaker even before the… _Wardens—"_ He sneered, not even try to hide his disdain for once. Blackwall scoffed. "—got their hands on him. Consider how differently things might have ended up had you—and before you lash out, I do mean 'you' in the general sense—solved the problem the first time."

"You mean Tranquillity?" Cassandra asked. "Anders was a Harrowed mage."

"Don't even get me started on the futility of the Harrowing," he snorted. "Proving they can deny a demon's advances one time under threat of death is hardly indicative of their natures. Just look how many of them instantly resorted to blood magic."

"That much I…can agree with," Cullen said with a reluctant sigh.

"A proposal for more liberal application of the Rite was brought before and subsequently squashed by the Divine herself," the Seeker reminded them.

"Exactly whose point are you trying to prove?" Everett asked, smirking. He shrugged then. "Besides, it's not even about the Rite. Most mages would tell you they'd rather be dead, and frankly, the world only needs so many herb-pickers and curiosity peddlers."

"So then, to be sure I understand you correctly," Vivienne interjected, "you advocate that these 'troublemakers' be, what? Summarily executed? On the first offence? The second?"

"I prefer to think of it more as 'leading by example,'" he replied, "but yes. A zero tolerance policy."

"Maker's breath, brother! Why not kill them at birth and be done with it?"

"You jest, but I'd argue that there are cases when that's precisely what should be done." The table erupted with a round of dismayed whispers and screwed up faces. Everett raised his hand for silence and went on undeterred. "Being born with a power does not qualify one to wield it," he argued. "I don't suggest that they should  _all_  be put down. I'm not a  _monster_. Those who prove able to adapt have value. Like your pretty friend here." He gestured toward Vivienne. "But never without swift and firm oversight."

"What an absolute relief it must for them, knowing you would permit them to go on living in their cages, for so long as they do not sing out of tune," the Inquisitor sniped.

"Oh, Livvy," he said quietly, condescendingly. "I fear you'll understand in time, dear sister. A bed of flowers left untended will be soon ruled by weeds. Best to pull them one by one, lest you have to raze the entire garden to the ground." Everett reached out and placed his hand around the back of Olivia's neck, then grinned to the end of the table. "You can ask the Commander about that."

The skin of his broad thumb, coarse like weathered stone, chafed as it traced a short line along her neck; back and forth, back and forth. Firm, deliberate, provoking. The heavy, solid feeling returned to her chest and she cringed and shuddered, her ravenous insides churning in violent revolt.

Cullen pushed back from the table and rose to his feet. Clenched jaw pulsing under his ashen skin. Trembling hand balled into a fist at his side. His smouldering glower cast a shadow over the table as it snapped from Everett to Olivia, to the hand on her neck and back to her brother's face. A hush fell that no one dared to break, not even the Commander himself, even as he visibly struggled to hold on to a most savage condemnation.

Instead, he merely turned, and left without a single word.

Everett chuckled and promptly pulled his hand away. "Was it something I said?"


	24. Purging

The night dragged on at an agonising pace. Before dinner, Josephine escorted a seemingly endless procession of nobles to the dais, that they might impress Olivia with the impassioned speeches they had spent the whole day crafting. Actual discourse was less important to them than the implication of it; so long as they could go back to their homes able to boastfully drop the Inquisitor's name. Ordinarily, such effrontery might have bothered her, but tonight she matched them for disinterest and played her part with the minimum of enthusiasm until the main course was served. A somewhat tense and largely silent dinner followed to save her from the banality.

"I can't even tell what I'm looking at. Is this an ear, a snout…something else entirely? Ugh, you know what? I don't even want to know. I mean,  _really_ , Inquisitor?"

Steadfast upon her throne of iron, the Inquisitor surveyed the room with a gaze of steel. Vaguely aware that she was being addressed, she turned her head slightly, though her eyes remained front. "Hm?"

" _Nug_ , of all things _?_  It's like you  _want_  to hurt me." Varric shoved the plate aside.

The kitchen prepared a particularly monstrous specimen for the Inquisitor's table, so plump and heavy it required two lads to heave it onto the serving slab. Chef roasted the beast whole, sealed inside a thick, hard crust of salt and herbs from which only the head emerged. The vacant eye sockets were dark blights against the glistening, golden baked skin, and the thing's mouth hung open in a silent scream, choked by a stuffing of bread, onions and deep mushrooms. It lay at rest in a garden of roasted vegetables and greens. The end effect was one of the pitiful creature having disgorged its own final meal after being crushed to death by a salty boulder.

"I promised my dear brother a king's feast," she said, plucking up a shred of meat from his scorned plate. It was surprisingly delicious, provided one could get beyond the macabre presentation. "Perhaps I should have specified; I meant  _dwarven_  king."

"One time, my brother sealed me in an ancient thaig and left me to be eaten by darkspawn and demon-possessed rock…things," he said, grimacing as he watched her chew. "You're way crueler."

Olivia smiled, recalling how the colour had drained from Everett's face when the platter was revealed; he quickly fled the table without as much as a bite. "Funny. He seemed to not appreciate the gesture, either."

Varric chuckled, and she returned her full attentions forward.

The crowd thinned as guests began the staggering march back to their quarters, fat and happy, with sore heads to look forward to in the morning. A ragtag band of minstrels took over for the bard, and with dinner now over, their lively songs encouraged the remaining guests toward dance. A  _very_  tipsy Dorian had even managed to convince an equally drunken Blackwall to throw his lot with the merrymakers—though Olivia suspected the presence of  _Lady Montilyet_ on the floor to be the truer motivation. Whatever the impetus, both men's dancing left something to be desired, but at least the three of them appeared to be enjoying themselves.

Olivia's primary interest, however, was elsewhere; on a solitary figure, moving about the hall in an almost shy slink that belied his usual arrogant air. Every so often someone would stop him, and they would converse briefly, but after each pause, he moved on with seemingly greater impatience.  _What are you doing, Everett?_   _Why are you even here?_  Nose upturned, eyes cast down its length; he wore a sneer on his lip as thought the air around him had been pervaded by a most foul odour.

_Like he can smell the magic_.

"Cassandra," she called over the din, and turned to find the Seeker at attention, appraising her with a brow cocked questioningly. "You spent time in the Marches; have you ever heard of a templar going by the name 'The Lymer?'"

She shook her head without a moment's thought. "But I had little to do with the Order while I was there."

"Yeah, her schedule was pretty full, what with the hostage-taking and the violent interrogation of hapless merchants," Varric muttered.

"I heard that, dwarf," Cassandra snapped.

"Nothing gets past you, Seeker," he said tiredly.

The Inquisitor ignored their squabbling. In the brief moment of distraction, Everett had disappeared. Sitting forward anxiously, she scanned the crowd where she had last seen him, but in the unruly sea of faces, weaving in and out and spinning around one another, it was difficult to pick out a single one. At once, she wished she had not been so quick to suppress the Nightingale's hand yesterday. At the time, the notion of spying on family had left a grimy feeling on her skin. Now, the idea that he was family at all that was the greater discomfort. She could still feel the hot press of his hand on her neck. Crushing upon her tendons. Choking at her veins. A bite without teeth, but no less a threat.

"My dear," Vivienne interjected, "if you want to know about a templar, I dare say, you should ask a  _mage_."

Olivia snapped her head back around. "What? Have  _you_  heard of him, Vivienne?"

The enchanter scoffed with some offence at the question. "Naturally. One does not reach my station without hearing all  _kinds_  of things. And though it has been—well, more years than a lady should own to—since I resided in the Free Marches, whispers of a knight, so called, prevailed even then."

"And?" she pressed.

"Little of it bears repeating, I fear. Only stories, replete with half-truths and ludicrous improbabilities," Vivienne replied, putting her goblet of wine aside. "Suffice to say, he was a knight particularly renowned for his… _tenacity_ , shall we say? According to the rumours, he called neither Circle nor Chantry his home. A free agent, if you will; travelling the Free Marches on his own, township to township, 'correcting' apostasy wherever he found it. By whatever means he saw fit."

"That is highly unconventional," the Seeker said, her disapproval clear.

Vivienne nodded at her. "As I said, dear: half-truths and improbabilities. All to be taken with a rather large pinch of salt." She turned then back to Olivia. "According to those stories, he was possessed of an unparalleled cruelty—though one can rarely trust a mage for an objective appraisal of a templar's character. Even saying his name aloud was believed—by the more superstitious fools, naturally—to invite misfortune." She smiled then; one of those knowing smiles that spoke to all the power she possessed, and reminded all who looked on it of their deficit. "The kind of monster dreamed up to scare naughty children into their beds at night."

"But who is— _was—_ he?" the Inquisitor asked, impatience biting at her tongue. "Does he even exist at all?"

She laughed coldly. "Ask a dozen knights who The Lymer was and never get a satisfactory answer to that question, my dear. Two would tell you nothing at all, three would claim to be him personally, and the rest would all offer up a different name. And that is precisely  _why_  he was so feared. It was the idea that he could be anywhere, anyone, at any time. To give him a face or a name would only diminish that power."

"Ridiculous. I have never heard of such a thing," Cassandra said with a grunt, but then seemed to reconsider her stance, adding, "Though the Order always did have a flair for the dramatic."

"Indeed," Vivienne agreed. "Though it transcends simply drama for drama's sake.  _Fear_  is an effective form of control, and the oldest. And where fear resides, the truth is seldom of any consequence; more often, it only gets in the way." Plucking up her wine, she appraised the Inquisitor closely as she sipped. "Might one infer that this precipitous curiosity has something to do with the arrival of the esteemed Knight-Commander, Inquisitor?" She laughed. "Such arrogance in that one; I'm sure I can guess which of the aforementioned dozen  _he_  might be."

"No," Olivia answered. "A peculiar anecdote Braeden told earlier, that's all."

She was not certain why she felt compelled to conceal the truth—it was not as if Vivienne would believe it, anyway. The same curious shame that prompted her to ask in the first place, she supposed. The Trevelyan name was good and noble; it stood for faith, honour and integrity. She had wanted assurance that Braeden's claims were impossible, and that this terrible feeling growing inside of her was misplaced. Instead, the more she heard and saw, the more it seemed the only thing misplaced were her ideas of familial loyalty. Everett spoke of faith, but he exuded no honour, and his opinions were so extreme as to utterly transcend belief, and ruminating on Vivienne's account, other aspects of his life made more sense. The infrequent contact, the evasiveness, and the age he wore beyond his years…even his appointment to Starkhaven. The Circle there broke apart, and all the little captive rabbits fled; the obvious response was to set the hound upon them.

No, she decided; The Lymer was no myth, no rumour, no make-believe monster. He had a name, and it was  _her_  name. He had a face, and it was their mother's. Was it that he was unable, or simply  _unwilling,_  to live up to the branding of his birth? And what did it matter? There was no reason he could give that could satisfy her. She felt him in her blood, a taint like a river of black bile, and the thought of him made her want to tear apart her flesh just to purge him from her veins.

At her right, Varric suddenly grunted. "Well, I think I've had my fill of creepy shit for one night. Thanks, I guess?" he said. Unfolding a napkin on the table, he loaded it with as many sweet little pastries as he could reasonably carry and then tied the corners together. "Takin' these with me, though."

Turning to face Cassandra, he stooped into a deep bow, empty hand twirling into flourish. The Seeker answered his gesture with her trademark glare; the dwarf chuckled, gave Olivia a wink and then trundled off.

She jealously watched Varric go, until his small stature was overwhelmed by the crowd.  _Would anyone even notice if I left?_ she wondered, glancing longingly at her chamber door. No visitors had been by for some time, and the ambassador, presently spinning on Dorian's arm, had obviously aside her office for the night. But she knew she would not be able to sleep; not until she knew what had become of Everett, and maybe not even then.

Then, almost as if summoned by her very thoughts, she caught sight of him again. No longer prowling, but settled into his purposeful stride, he approached along the western edge of the room. The staple smug smile, too, had returned. The Inquisitor straightened in her seat as he neared, fixed the line of her coat and lifted her chin, high and proud. Her jaw she kept clenched to hold back the acid that pooled in her cheeks when she saw his smirk broadened into a wicked grin.

"Still up, Livvy? I thought it might be past your bedtime."

Refusing to gift him her indignation, she instead coughed out a laugh. "And where have you been, brother? I was worried. You barely touched your dinner." She gestured at the—now cold and thoroughly mangled—nug corpse. "Are you feeling well?"

He grimaced. "All efforts to the contrary," Everett muttered, and then nodded from whence he came. "Your Chantry; it's a…quaint little thing, isn't it? Regardless, it is  _so_  satisfying, just to lose oneself in prayer." He sounded almost sincere. Turning back, he added, "However, I am quite spent. I think I shall turn in for the night."

Olivia nodded. "Your travels wear on you, Everett," she said, choosing her words prudently. "I agree; it's time you retired."

"Ah, little Livvy; what a generous soul you are."

Everett smiled and leaned down, as if to place a patronising kiss on the top of her head, but she had suffered quite enough of his affection and withdrew before he could make contact. A strange and strained moment followed, with their eyes locked just inches apart. A dark displeasure clearly roiled behind his cold stare, but Olivia felt nothing. Not fear, not sadness, not guilt, nor any semblance of familial obligation. Just…nothing _._ And for the second time that evening, he acquiesced.

As he pulled away, she spied an odd dark spot by his ear; shiny and wet-looking. Curious, the Inquisitor grabbed his chin and forced his head to the side so that she might inspect it in the light. Everett grunted, first with surprise and then with anger as he jerked his head free. Not before the inky slickness revealed itself as being, in fact, quite  _red_.

With narrowed eyes, she glared up at him. "Are you bleeding, brother?"

Everett's brow wrinkled briefly as he wiped the side of his face, gloved finger leaving behind a bright crimson smear. "A careless scratch," he said, inspecting the stain on the leather. "Nothing you need concern yourself with."

A barrage of heavy footfalls on the steps gave Olivia little time to dwell on her mistrust. Everett turned, and behind him revealed Varric running for them, caught in a wide-eyed panic.

"She's gone," he blurted, and doubled over to catch his breath. "I  _knew_  it. Should never have left her alone. Damn it!" When he looked up again, the panic had been replaced by gritty determination. "I gotta go. Gotta go after her. I gotta find her."

Olivia sat forward. "Varric, calm down. We'll find her. I'm sure she's just—"

Before she could get the whole placation out, there came another commotion, this time from the opposite side of the room. A pair of armoured soldiers jogged along the side wall, snow still clinging to their frozen pauldrons, though both were red-faced with the effort of their run. Cassandra leapt to her feet and met them at the bottom of the steps. They spoke briefly, in tones too hushed to be heard over the volume of the room, and then the Seeker dismissed them.

"Well?" the Inquisitor asked expectantly.

Cassandra half-sighed as she joined them at the centre of the table. "A horse was stolen from the stables. A hood concealed the rider's face, but they—" She glanced at Varric, then back. " _She_  fled through the gates only moments ago."

"I'm goin' after her," Varric declared. Without waiting for the argument he must have known would come, he turned and ran.

"Varric, wait!" Cassandra yelled after him, but the dwarf was already too far gone. "Shit," she growled under her breath. "That idiot will get himself killed on his own." With a sigh, she turned back. "I will go with him, Inquisitor."

With the bruises from the pair's last meeting were still fresh on his face, and as ever, goodwill apparently in short supply, the Inquisitor shook her head. "I'm not sure that's a good idea," she argued, rising to her feet. "I think I should—"

The Seeker grunted at the suggestion. "She cannot have gotten far. We will not be long." Also leaving no room for debate, Cassandra withdrew.

Olivia slumped back into her throne. The throbbing in her leg was suddenly echoed in her temples, and with her eyes closed tight, she rubbed at the spot hard enough that she quickly felt neither. All being well, all three of them would be back inside the hour. Dawn at the latest.  _But when was the last time_ anything _actually went 'well'?_

Everett laughed and placed a hand on her shoulder. "It appears it's true what they say, sister: there is simply no rest for the  _wicked,"_  he quipped.

Frowning, she looked sidelong at his leathered fingers, and the tapestry of dark brown stains permeated into the grain. With a shudder, she shrugged his hand aside.

_And how well do you sleep at night, brother?_


	25. Closing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The previous chapter, Purging, was written and intended as Ch26. While reviewing, I decided things flowed better if Purging came earlier. For the sake of clarity, Purging and this one, Closing one are effectively companion chapters--they occur more or less concurrently, but from different points of view. I wanted to post them both together last night, but while doing final edits, decided heeey, it's Sunday; why not completely rewrite a chapter you've had written for two weeks. How fun!
> 
> And it's also important to remember that I'm an awful human being. (I'm so sorry, Hawke!)
> 
> And because I haven't said it enough, my sincere thanks for all the lovely, thoughtful messages--even/especially the ones condemning Everett to the fiery bowels of Hell. lol I'm frequently surprised to find anyone still reading--I mean, 26 verbose chapters and he hasn't even kissed the girl, yet? COME THE F ON, CULLEN.
> 
> (It's coming, I promise!)

* * *

 

  
He's pacing again. Nine steps from the bed to the door. Ten steps back. Short legs; takes him longer. A heavy sigh and back he goes. Scratches at his stubble. Groans quietly. He's frustrated. Uneasy. He never did do well in small spaces. Reminds him too much of the Deep. She doesn't want to remember that, either.

"What do you say we get out for a bit? Big, fancy feast in the Hall tonight. We can get some food, have a few drinks. Meet some people. Talk, laugh. You do remember how to do those things, right?" He pauses. Scratches again. "I know where the Inquisitor keeps her stash of West Hill brandy?" He resorts to bribery. Can't help it; it's his way.

She only shakes her head, then remembers the blanket covering her. Did he see? "No." She says it aloud; just in case.

_Inquisitor._  It's an unsettling title. She does not know yet what to make of the woman herself. The things she says and the way she says them seem at odds. Those who grapple with control mostly lose it.

This whole place feels strange. Old and new. Close to where her life began. So far from where it ended. Little is familiar. Apparently, they call the Knight-Captain 'Commander' now. The walls are crawling with Templars, and the mountains brim with magic. All of them walk about together, unafraid. Or maybe they are  _all_  afraid. If fear unites them, what happens when they stop being afraid again?

A silly question. All manner of nightmares lurk in the shadows. Always something to be afraid of. Twilight is a tenacious hunter. Walls eventually break. Darkness always closes.

"C'mon, Waffles. Don't you wanna get some fresh air? Some that doesn't smell like a pack of dogs drowned in it?"

"I like the smell."

He grunts. He doesn't understand. He can't know how it reminds her of other things. Of that cave, up on the border of Antiva. Deep, dark, damp, cold. Pouring rain. Rushing down, like the sky had swallowed the sea. Something nice about the smell of wet rock and fresh mud. Clean, pure. Not many things left in the world can claim the same.

They built themselves a fire. Sting of wood smoke filled the air. Crackling, popping. It was like home in the winter. Cosy, almost; if not for everything else. The first time in days they'd rested. Their legs, weary from running; their stomachs and purses both long empty. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs, which they stripped out of to dry. They lay together before the fire, huddled together for warmth. Skin to skin, all entwined. Hands remembering what the other body felt like. Outside, the world was falling apart, but for those crowded hours inside that cave, they were whole. They took comfort in one another that they both sorely needed. He was struggling, even then. But they had each other. The two of them.

And  _him._

That was almost two years ago. Happier times, easier times; as if they were ever either of those things. When letting go seemed the last thing she would ever be able to do. Would ever  _want_  to do.

Another sigh. Heavier and deeper. Right out of his soul. Not pacing anymore, but turning about in circles. Snapping his fingers. Impatient. Even more frustrated. It's a feeling they share.

"I don't like you being holed up in here like this. Doesn't feel right." He pauses, considering the truth. Then he just says it. " _I_  don't like being holed up in here like this."

"So go, then." It comes out more harshly than she intends, but it's what they both want anyway. Still, she feels guilty. She rolls over, pulls the blanket down a little. "I'm fine. Promise."

It still feels strange to look another person in the eyes. When was the last time? And his aren't so familiar anymore. Harder; sadder. Full of pity. For her, and for himself. He's not the same as he was, either. He has to force his easiness. It's not so convincing. Everything is different, and he can't admit that she's too much for him to handle anymore. She misses her old friend. Not as much as she misses her old self.

"All right, all right; fine. I guess I'll…go stretch my legs a bit. I'll be back. Maybe I'll bring you something nice. If you're good."

Curious. "Like what?"

He pulls the door, shrugging. "Anything you want."

A feeble smile breaks under the blanket. Maybe he sees it in her eyes. "Waffles?"

It seems to satisfy. He laughs, and then he leaves.

Alone at last, the cold shakes take over, but her veins feels on fire. She pulls the blanket back up, all the way; tucks it in behind her head. Flimsy old thing, it does little to warm her. All her body aches and trembles. Hand, toes. Head, heart. The last is the most pronounced.

She brings her fingers before her face, watches them bend and curl. Stroking at the air. Brow wrinkled with effort.  _Focus._  It never used to take so much to get so little, but at last the air starts to shimmer and glow. Soft little pinpricks of white light spark up. One, then two, then five, then a dozen, then many dozens. Reminds her of the fireflies in the marches off Ansburg, how they would flock and chase one another. The air gently warms. The little lights flock, and they chase, dancing between her fingers. They swarm together into a single glowing orb, and when she blows on it, they scatter. A dandelion of light, torn apart on the breeze, strewn against the blanket overhead. A tiny sky of tiny stars inside her tiny darkness.

The same fingers reach then inside her blouse for the old, worn out letter tucked always against her breast. Tattered at the edges, torn in the creases, tears in the ink. Folded, unfolded, folded again. Every night for the last hundred nights, and the hundred more before that. By now his words are etched upon her heart, but she reads them, all the same. She studies his hand. Imagines him scribbling. Wide awake and full of fear while she slept sound not far away. Every stroke a battlefield where he waged his lonely war. Losing the fight with every drop of ink he shed.

 

 

_Em,_

_I wish I could say our darkest days are behind us and have it not be a lie. The truth is, love, I fear I have not_   
_long left now. Even as I write this, I feel him pulling me away, fighting for his freedom. Every day he grows_   
_stronger, and I weaker._

_We both wanted to believe that we could win this together, but I have come to accept that there are battles_   
_that hope alone cannot conquer. You must too, love. For your own sake._

_Each morning that I wake beside you, I feel blessed. But I am also curse, and my curse is stronger. It is will_   
_alone that I have kept him at bay this long, but I know one day soon, he will wake beside you in my place,_   
_and I will have seen my final dawn._

_I don't tell you this to scare or hurt you, but only to prepare you. I wish I had more time. I wish I had the_   
_time to tell you all the ways in which **you** have changed me for the better. I  am a stronger man for having_   
_loved and been loved by you, but also a weaker one by far. I am fearless when you are with me, and more_   
_afraid than I have ever been. I  am proud to be the man that you desire, even as I grow weary with my shame._

_I wish I could have given you the life that you deserved. I wish that I had been a man worthy of your love and trust._   
_I wish I had been strong enough to rise up, and not so weak that I had to drag you down with me._   
_I wish you could have known me as I was before. I hate what I have done to you. To us._

_Besides my regrets, all I have to give you now is the only thing that is still wholly mine—my heart. I hope it is enough._   
_With every beat, I exalt your name to the heavens. That is where you will find me, waiting, long after he had taken what_   
_remains of my mind._

_When I am gone, I pray you will remember the good times, if they are any.  
       I pray that you will remember _ _**me** _ _, and how much_ _I_ _loved you._

_Now. Then. Forever. Always._

_A xx_

 

 

He wrote it in the winter, and in the springtime, left her. It went as he predicted, quiet and final. Awoke one morning, warm amber eyes turned, for the last time, to icy blue. For hours he stared as his new hands, unsure what to do with them. Then for hours, stared at her, unsure what to do with her. The words came from his mouth all jumbled as he struggled to find his voice. One man's thoughts, wrapped around a different man's tongue.

It was terrifying.

He did not sleep. Did not eat. All that flesh at his command, and he did nought but pace. Back and forth. Day and night. From their bed—now  _her_  bed—she listened to him mumble unintelligibly as he patrolled about their hovel. Counting his steps until she fell asleep. Fourteen steps from the bed to the door. Eight from the door to the table. Nine back to the door again. Eighteen to the hearth at the far wall. Mumble. Mutter. Not a sigh, not a gasp; did the thing living in his skin even breathe?

On the fourth day, she awoke to find him gone without a word. All day she waited, praying that he would return. That  _Anders_  would return. Day turned to night, turned to day again with nothing. Then a letter arrived bearing the Warden seal. She waited two more days, just in case, but in her heart she knew that it was done.

So bent was he on freedom that he made himself a prisoner. There was no room for both of them inside his cell.

The opposite of love is Vengeance.

Every night on the road, she read his letter. Counting her own tears until she fell asleep. Counting the miles she put between them. By now, she has lost count of both. Now, she only reads. Reads, and reads, and reads again. Wishing and hoping and praying that when sleep finds her, so will he.

The lyrium helps; strengthens her connection. Makes her easier to find. Makes the dreams more vivid. Makes the pain less so. Even then, he does not always find her. Sometimes, other things find her. Darker things. Dangerous things. It is a risk worth taking. But every time she wakes and the spark inside her fades, the hurt rushes back all at once. A great wall of it. A wave out of the deepest ocean there is.

The lyrium is gone now, so tonight she will have to find him on her own. She reads, and she studies his script. She makes all of her thoughts about him. Remembers his face; his rare smile. His hands. Forearms. Shoulders. Neck. The curve of his back. The way he wore his hair. His crazed and needful kiss; the kiss of a man who understood that each one could be his last. No one will ever covet her as much as he did.

Right on the cusp of falling, the door groans inward. She sighs. He is back too soon. Only a minute or two longer and—

The stride is too long. There is a jangling behind the walk.

Her heart accelerates as she watches, one by one, the stars she made over her head flicker. Fizzle.  _Die._

_He's here!_  The monster from the night. The prickle on her neck. The eyes in the dark. All that running for nothing. She knew it was a mistake to from here. No place is safe anymore.

The shadow falls over the bed. Tall and lean. The last of the tiny stars die out.

Darkness always closes.

Desperate, she throws off the blanket, and throws herself after it, as his hand grabs for her. A clump of her hair catches in his fingers and rips from her scalp as she tumbles from the bed. A growl vents out of him. Frustrated. She grunts in pain as she lands, hard, on her shoulder; gasping for the breath that sudden terror has bereaved her of. Scalp burning, bleeding, raw. The door stands open only five, six steps away. If she can only get there.

As she scrambles to her feet, she contorts her fingers into a quick fire sign. Embers ignite, gather, grow into an orb of searing flame, which she hurls with all her might; it is not much. She is weak and the spell weaker. With a raised palm, he swats the fireball away like it is little more than an annoying horse-fly. It disintegrates into a shower of red glints and dead ash on the floor.

The damp stone is slick beneath her worn out boots, and they slide out from under her as she tries to run with reckless haste. He is coming.  _Cha-chink. Cha-chink. Cha-chink._  Three of his long strides are all it takes before he is upon her, and a massive boot smashes into her side. The scant air left in her lungs explodes out of them. Something breaks; a crunch of agony in her bones. It drops her to her knees and then right down; she curls up on her side, clutching at her ribs. Crawling, now. Fingernails peeling back as she tries to drag her hurting body to the door.

No escape.

He reaches for her, grabs her throat and lifts her. Up and up, until her feet can't find the floor. All her fingers twitch and flutter, signing out every spell she can remember. Ice and entropy. Oil and fire. Sleep and spirit. The lightning spells that Anders taught her.  _What else?_  Dread has stolen all her reason, and it does not matter. Every single spell she tries, he suppresses. Dampens and snuffs out, like a campfire under a deluge.

She wraps her useless fingers around his and tries to pry them from her throat, but it, too, is a vain effort. He slams her against the wall in warning. Already aching, her head bounces off the stone. Vision blurs. Chantry bells sing in her ears. Her teeth clamp down on her tongue and instantly everything tastes of rust. His armoured plates press into her hips, into her guts as he holds her to the wall with his weight. Her feet kick wildly. At least one toe breaks against his armoured legs, maybe two. He does not budge. Pins and needles travel up and down her spine. She is snared. Trapped. Face to face with the monster from the darkness. Eye to eye. Though she has never seen these eyes before now, she has felt them, keenly, every day on her back. Hard like stone and sharp as blades. Even in her wildest imaginings, they were so full of hate.

"I don't have a lot of time until your runt comes back, so I'll make this quick. I speak, you listen." Hot breath licks at her skin, smells of ale and meat. "Nod that you understand."

She forces her heavy head to nod.

"You don't concern me. All I want is  _him._  So here's my offer: tell me where the abomination is, and I let you keep your wretched life." The vice squeezes around her throat. "But force my hand, and I will take  _everything_  from you. Hear me? Your mind, your magic, your home, your friends. Your worthless uncle, even your dog. Everyone you have ever met will die, screaming in the streets, when I crush Kirkwall to dust beneath my heel." He leans in close. Chapped lips push and pant at her ear. He sniffs at her; she dare not even breathe.

"And I'll make sure they know how you squandered the chance I gave you to save their lives. They will go to the Void with nothing in their hearts but their  _fear_  of me, and their  _hate_ of you." When he pulls back, he is smiling the worst smile she has ever seen. Lop-sided, thin-lipped, fake and taunting. "Nod that you understand."

Blood has filled her mouth. She nods, and it trickles down her windpipe. Coughing erupts, violent and rough. Rips up her throat and brings more blood from her lungs with it. Panic quickly spreads. Tears follow; big, choking sobs that stab at her broken ribs. Breath short, head pounding, stomach tossing about inside of her; she cannot contain it. All at once, a mess of gore blasts out of her mouth. A syrupy spray of it, all over his cold, angular face.

"Ugh," he grunts. All her spewed up viscera drips down his cheek, down her chin. A sigh follows, or maybe a laugh; she can't tell over her spluttering. With his other hand, he feels around at his belt.

"Please—" She wants to tell him the truth; that Anders is gone and what became of his body, she cannot know. But the words never reach her lips. He won't believe her. No one will. Why would they believe a thing that she does not wish to believe herself?

His hand comes away holding a small lyrium vial. Between his teeth, he pops off the lid and upends it all over the floor. She slumps, weakly, watching it spill. What she could do with a single drop… But now emptied, he drags the lip of the vial across his cheek, and does the same to her chin. Capturing her blood. It's only enough to fill the vial a third of the way, but he seems content and caps it; then tucks it back under his metal faulds.

"Think about my offer.  _Really_  think about it," he says. "I'll be back for your answer." Chilling steel eyes track her whenever she tries to escape them; he wants to make sure she sees how much he means what he says next. "Speak of this to anyone, and your friends die. Run, and I will find you. If you make hunt you down again, I promise; I won't be so  _nice_  when next we meet _._  Understand? Nod."

She does.

"Good girl." A sigh ekes out of him, distinctly satisfied, as leans in and places a blistering kiss on her forehead. Asperous lips, rough like scales; the feel of them lingers long after he pulls away. A searing hot brand. "I'll see you soon,  _'Champion_.'"

The hand loosens, then lets go. She drops to a heap on the floor and he is gone. Slipped out into the night; slunk back into the shadows. The only trace that he was ever there burning in her bones, in her terror and her tears, in the blood dribbling from her mouth.

He will return for an answer that he will not believe. If she remains, she will die or worse and no one here will help her. They already think her mad.

Frantic, she spits out the dregs of blood and dips her fingers into the spilt lyrium, then sucks them dry. It tingles on her tongue, and she goes back for more, and more, until her only the taste of dirt comes back. Deep down inside, a spark kindles; barely enough, but will have to do.  _Focus._  One hand pressed to her side, she uses the other to drag herself back to the bed.

Sweat on her brow, heat in her fingertips. A dim blue light glowing beneath her palm. The first spell Anders ever taught her. She needed to be more self-reliant, he told her. He was right. More tears come. She bites down on a knuckle to silence her screams as the bones move back into place. It is quick but severe, leaves her panting long after it is done.

Mending always hurts more than the breaking.

She stands, a little unsteadily, and digs through the tangle of blanket until she finds the tattered parchment. Folds it. Tucks it back against her shattered heart.

The one thing she has left that is still wholly his.

Everything else will only slow her down.


	26. Warming

  
There are lies that all men tell themselves to help them sleep at night. The things they do, they do because they  _must._ Because they are  _right_  and they are  _just_. Because they have  _no other choice_. Over time, their lies grow and change, and with enough retellings, they turn into guarded truths that even they believe. Shields crafted and carried like all others, for self-preservation. But an undermining truth lurks behind every lie: no man, no matter how righteous, no matter how just, can be moved to an action that in his deepest heart he cannot match with reason.  _That_  is why he needs his shield: to protect him, not from the dangers without, but from the horrors within.

Cullen's shield arm hung broken at his side.

Details differed, but his nightmares always ended the same way: with he, throwing himself at the walls of his rotten tomb, screaming his throat raw, while demons outside his cage tore her apart, until there was nothing left but the bloody stain of his impotence. This time, he  _was_  the demon outside the cage. A twisted smile all washed in red. The scar still visible on his cheek, though his lips had long been torn away by madness.

She stood before him, not as some fallacious temptress clad in sheer veils, but garbed in her dark leathers, draped in fox furs, boots caked in mud and ice. Hair undone in waves over her shoulders; her nose red and cheeks blanched by winter winds. She looked… _real._ Flakes of snow still sparkled in her hair, and melted into dewy beads on her chapped lips; weathered and cold like her stare.

"I know who you are now," she said, cringing as his red shadow-self pressed its ghastly mouth against her neck, and its too-long fingers groped at her breast. Then, her bleak eyes grew suddenly wide. Blood bloomed bright against her dusky hunting skins where a gleaming Templar blade jutted from her chest, dripping with heart's blood.

Waking from the nightmare always felt like a plummet from a great height. Terror initially, giving way to a rush of quiet surrender, punctuated by an abrupt collision with solid ground. Most nights, it was a relief for the flight to be over. Tonight, those images would not leave him, nor the grip of that terror—or guilt—relent. Cullen stood at the brazier by the window, shivering with a cold that wracked his bones, and no paltry flame could warm him. Every spit and crackle of the coals caused him to flinch away. Countless ages' of rock lay beneath his feet, but he had the dizzying sense that he was still falling. End over end through an infinite prison of blame; memories like clouds of sediment, so stirred up he could not be certain there was anything left to stop his descent.

In his good hand, he held the surprise weight of a long-cherished tome. Years ago, a scribe had spent months toiling over its creation; inky fingers stained to the bone, etching every letter, verse, commandment and engraving with care and precision. Her blood was sewn into its bindings, and the leather cover was made supple with her sweat as she seared the Order's brand onto its face and spine. Hundreds of hours of her life, poured into a single book, crafted just for him.

It was the bedrock upon which his existence was assembled; his principles, his faith, his duty and his code were all informed by its pages. It served as his pillow through years of training at the monastery. It accompanied him to Kinloch Hold, where at the end of every shift, he would pull it from his footlocker and reaffirm until sleep. It was the only possession he carried to Kirkwall, where it saw him through the darkest nights, when he felt his sanity all but slipping away. Any time his faith had been called into question, the Tome of the Holy Order had been there to repair the cracks in his foundation. It had survived as he had survived, and was the only thing he had brought back home with him. In death, it would accompany him to the pyre.

And it was the last thing the Order gave him that he had not cut away.

With his thumb, he traced the outline burned into its face. The sword, thrust proud into the sky, burning true with Andraste's holy flame. And in the flames, he saw them all. Each and every face. Nameless, most of them. Did that make it better, or worse?

He thought they would be angry, that they would spew forth hate and venom. He thought that they would bare their teeth and blister their flesh. He though that they would rise, open up their veins and go screaming into the Void like the demons they obviously were. He thought they would make it easy, and that he would be vindicated; for foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift and turned it against His children.

Was he not the Maker's son?

Was he not His sword and His shield? His fury and His justice?

He did what he  _must_. Because there was _no other choice_. Because he was  _righteous_  and he was  _just_.

But there was no anger, no hatred and no venom. Only dread. They did not scream. They wept, and they cowered. They did not tear apart their seams to make room inside for demons. All those who would already had. Instead, the few who remained threw themselves to their knees and begged for mercy. They pleaded for forgiveness for crimes they had not committed. All they wanted was their lives.

The demons did come. They came in their suits of shining steel and crimson robes, with their thirsting swords of flame. They drove those blades through mortal hearts until the whimpers silenced. The flow of honest tears, stemmed by the flow of honest blood.

He thought that hate would kill the pain. He thought his shield would protect him from the guilt he tried to bury under time's shifting sands. But there was no lie that would ever grant him rest from what he had done. Now Olivia, too, would know what he really was. Despite the rift between them, that terrified him as much now as he had a week ago.

Cullen threw the book into the brazier.

A voracious flame flared up and devoured the pages first; snapping and popping as the ink ignited, and he winced away until it settled. The branded leather peeled back from the wooden cover, and that was the last thing to go. Soon the whole thing crumbled into char. The last thing that the Order gave him, fallen away to ash. He watched it go to the last, holding out his hands to warm himself over the funerary pyre, and feeling none of the sorrow or any of the relief he thought he might. Only bitter cold and resounding emptiness. One more thing on a mounting list of things he had been wrong about.

"You aren't a demon."

Already jittery, Cullen jumped at the sound, and found little relief when he turned to find the boy perched cross-legged upon his desk. He rocked back and forth, pale hands rubbing and squeezing at his legs, as if they were some great novelty—or a piece of fruit he was testing for firmness.

"Get off the desk."

Cole promptly obliged, and joined Cullen by the brazier. His feet made no sound as they landed on the stone floor. Unsettling. "You aren't it.  _It_  isn't  _you,_ and you aren't  _like_  it. You aren't like  _him,_ either. You're just…you."

"Thank the Maker we've cleared that up," the Commander muttered dryly.

"Yes," Cole agreed with a contented nod, the disdain apparently lost on him. "This place is loud tonight. Lots of shouts and burping. It makes my insides hurt. You shout, too, but quieter than the others. I wish I could be quiet too."

"So  _stop talking_."  _Or leave,_  Cullen thought, and sighed.

For a time, Cole did stop, and it was somehow worse. Though he hid his face beneath the sagging brim of his hat, Cullen could feel the boy watching. Humming softly, he moved his hands about over the flame, mimicking the Commander's motions exactly, and like everything else, it was unnerving. That Cullen had not firmly decided what Cole was yet added to his unease. He  _knew_  demons, and how it felt to have them crawling around inside his thoughts. Cole was not that, but was an intruder nonetheless, coming and going as he pleased and leaving no footprint behind. A thief rather than a tormentor, but that was as bad. At least for now, he seemed 'harmless', and had the Inquisitor's trust. Cullen could but stand by, ready for the day that trust was betrayed, as he was almost certain it would be.

_Does he even_ feel _the cold?_  he wondered.

"I don't like the other one," Cole confessed cryptically after a while.

"What?" Cullen asked, stirred from his errant musing. Thoughts Cole already probably knew. He shuddered.

"The other Inquisitor."

A quite involuntary grunt of disgust escaped him. "Nor I." Cullen knew nothing about the man besides what he had seen earlier, but had known plenty of templars of his ilk. He might have  _been_  one. No good came of men like that. What he hated more than Trevelyan's attitude was the way he tarnished her name by association, the way copper might when worn against the skin.

"Same blood, but he's not the same. Not  _red_ , but not  _right_. Hard, hungry, hollow. Hunting for things he thinks he lost, but were never his." Cole was quiet for several minutes, and then he hummed again, this time somewhat thoughtfully. "Once, the Inquisitor gave me a piece of cake. It fell away to dust like an old corpse on my tongue, dry and dead. I did  _not_  like it. I did not want to eat  _death_. She laughed at my face when I spat it out. I liked that part. Laughter makes her lighter." He tilted his head toward Cullen. "Like when she thinks of you. Weak, weightless, warm and wanting. Riled and roused deep down in shrouded places."

A hint of a smile touched his marred lip, and at long last he felt a kiss of heat in his skin. Cullen quickly cleared his throat and forced a frown. "Such thoughts are not for you," he admonished.

The spirit shrugged and fell silent again, but the air bristled with his nervousness. He rocked back and forth on his heels, and the thing he struggled with was not contained for long. "I only wanted her to shine again," he whispered, and heaved a sigh. "It didn't work. She is as dark as ever."

"What 'didn't work?'" Cullen stopped and looked at the boy, hidden and now shrinking further beneath his cover. "What did you do?"

Cole's hands, too, stilled. Their idleness seemed to trouble him, and not knowing what else to do, he stuffed them under his armpits. "You were like the cake, all dry and crumbling. Expended, but...not expendable. She was afraid. She is  _always_  afraid. Fear only makes fear stronger. It wicks away the warmth, and as it wanes, she wastes away. One day soon there will be nothing left."

The dread of his nightmare flared up, fresh and raw. Cullen's hand drifted for his hip, where his fingers curled into a frustrated fist when they did not find the hilt that should have been there. "Tell me what you did, demon, or so help me—"

"It isn't  _me_! _I'm not a demon! I_  only wanted to help. Help her and you; help her  _help_  you!" The spirit backed steadily away from the brazier until he was pressed against the desk. "The chain is heavy, but keeps you from drifting. I brought her the little blue key, but she would not turn it on her own. I had to show her. But the truth made her angry, turned her face fierce and frightening. I was scared. I wanted her to shine, not  _burn_. So I made her forget me." Cole sighed again. "I don't understand. She wanted you to live, and you live. You wanted to come back, and you came back. Something went wrong. There's still so much hurting."

Furious, Cullen moved for him, but in a blink, Cole was gone; vanished, as if he was made of the very fabric of the night. This time, the thief took nothing with him, but left behind an echoing truth that eddied on the wintry draught like brazier smoke.

_Am I still dreaming?_ he wondered. Could it be that he wanted so badly to forgive that he would craft such a convincing lie to justify it?It would not be the most damning fiction he ever told himself. The last traces of the lyrium still burned in his blood, but if there was a thing he craved more than that, only Olivia could give it. A doting smile. A tender touch. Her hand in his and his body beside her. No hurt, no anger, no violent fear could ever fully arrest his longing.

Then, all at once, he felt the earth beneath him rush together, and rise up with alarming speed to break his untamed descent.


	27. Warring

_And if the sun never rose again, would you spend your whole life at the window, waiting?_

Olivia watched the coming dawn from her balcony, feeling more alert than she had in weeks, despite only a few hours of sleep. As if a veil had lifted in the night, and at long last, she could see clearly to the distant horizon. There, the sun was little more than a slash of red severing land and sky, but below her, life was already creeping back into the Hold. A pair of recruits was clearing snow from the training circle, making ready for drills. Old Cabot rolled spent kegs out the back of the tavern and stacked them for collection later. In the infirmary yard, medics shook off sagging triage tents and stoked braziers back to life. All about her, things were returning to normal, and she it was clear to her that she needed to do the same. And she knew precisely where to begin.

Returning inside, she set a handbasin of water over the coals to warm as she stripped out of the hunting leathers she had slept in. As she tossed each piece across the bed, she recalled that casual disdain with which Everett had thrown his armour aside that first night, and wondered again about the man beneath it. Their first conversation in years had turned so quickly to cavilling, and every moment since had revealed a new sliver of an alarming whole. But still, she had to ask…did he  _truly_  believe the things he said? Or could it have been for show? A part of his Knight's regalia; in the same way 'the Inquisitor' had assumed a voice distinct from her own. It was politics, and  _necessity._ At the same time, what difference did it make who was behind the mask if no one ever saw him? And would she even recognise him if she did?

Whatever the case, the thing she knew for certain was that he had become a distraction she did not need.

With goose bumps rippling across her bare flesh in the frigid air, she soaked a cloth and went hastily through her ablutions, then dried and hurried into fresh clothes before the chill could settle. At the side of the bed, she sat and glanced idly about her quarters while she buckled her boots. In the bluish monotone of predawn, the room seemed to blend right into the mountains and sky as if it was all one space, stretching on forever. She never suspected that she might actually miss that hot, cramped little closet of a room at the Chantry, with its one tiny window on the world. The endless silence of this cage of glass served only to emphasise how apart she was from everything. From  _everyone._ No matter how close they seemed.

"Enough," she chided as she rose, dismissing those darker thoughts before they could take root.

Finally, her attention landed on the settee, still sitting where Everett had left it days ago. Dragged there against her will; abandoned out of place. Ignoring the stiffness in her leg from yesterday's fall, she pulled and shoved the unwieldy thing back against the stairs where it belonged. A punch or two to fluff the cushions, a quick smooth of the wrinkled seat, and all trace of her brother's intrusion was erased. She smiled, satisfied, and then headed downstairs to tend to the rest.

What she found down there would take more than a little hand-waving. In the Great Hall, filth prevailed. Muddy tracks and sticky pools of slopped wine; half-eaten food ground into the stone; overturned chairs; empty mugs and plates left everywhere. Also, a smattering of  _human-_ shaped dregs. Drunks, snoring on benches, on the floor, draped over tables; wherever the last drink had done them in. One was curled up  _on_  a table, hugging a stinking, picked over nug carcass to his chest like a cherished love. Olivia pressed her hand to her nose, scrubbing at her tongue with her teeth, convinced she could taste the foulness.

But before she could even begin with  _that_  mess, a messenger approached from the north side. One of Leliana's runners. There was something about the way the Nightingale's people moved that set them apart from the others, almost like their feet never fully hit the ground. They were in a constant state of alert—as were all her soldiers, she supposed—but where Cullen's people seemed grounded and prepared to leap into a fight at a moment's notice, Leliana's were prepared to simply disappear. This one was an elven girl; a pale-skinned, waif of a thing, which only seemed to emphasise that odd nimbleness. She kept her eyes glued to the floor, pulled up a few feet shy and held out her arm, bouncing in place and waiting for the Inquisitor to take the letter clasped in her fingers. As soon as Olivia did, the girl darted away without a sound or a word of acknowledgment.

Olivia shook her head as she tore it open to find two notes inside. The first, a small piece of parchment, its corners curled from having been once scrolled around a raven's neck. The second was from Leliana herself. The scroll bore a terse message in the Seeker's hand, sent from the outpost at the bottom of the mountain. 'Failed to catch the Champion. Continuing north.' The Nightingale reported she had sent advanced word to every outpost from here to West Hill, and south as far as Redcliffe as precaution; she was confident they would have 'secured' Hawke by day's end.

The news was all the more irksome for it being precisely as Olivia had feared would happen. Hawke, like Everett, was proving to be a headache, and it was debatable yet how much her information was worth. Now two of Olivia's people were tangled up in the mess, and they were the two  _least_  apt to be left alone together. The only good news was that they had not killed one another.  _Yet_.

"Wonderful." Irritated, she turned to the guard standing vigil outside her chamber door. "You," the Inquisitor barked, snapping her fingers. When she had his attention, she gestured toward the Great Hall. "I want this riff-raff  _out_  of my Hall, now. Even a breath of quarrel from them, and they can spend the day drying out down below."

"Yes, Inquisitor," he said curtly, and bowed.

Starting for the ambassador's door, Olivia gave a surly scowl at the tacky feeling of her boots on the grimy floor. "And if you see my girl Marceline before I do," she called back over her shoulder, "tell her I want every  _inch_  of this place scrubbed and scoured by day's end." The guard answered with another brief acknowledgement, and she stepped through to the office for the customary morning briefing.

Except, the office was empty. The chair was pushed under, a stack of untouched papers awaited attention in the centre of the desk, and the fireplace had burned down to only a few glowing coals. The far door was wide open, letting in an icy draught that Josephine would never tolerate. It was unlike her; even more so than Cullen, the woman seemed to  _live_  in her office.  _How much cheer did the good ambassador indulge last night?_  Olivia wondered, smirking; the last time she laid eyes on her, she was wrapped around Blackwall's arm.

More curiously, squinting down the bleakly lit hallway, it seemed that the War Room door was ajar. Surely they weren't in council; why would Leliana bother with the message on the runner? And it was  _early_. If they had called an emergency session, it could only mean some fresh disaster had occurred. All manner of morbid possibilities crept into her thoughts, and with a sigh, Olivia crossed the empty office and headed to investigate.

As she neared, she slowed to listen, and heard no voices inside. Just footsteps. Heavy ones. Chewing on her lip nervously, she called out, "Cullen?" The footsteps halted at the call of his name, and she winced as an entire swarm of butterflies took flight in her guts. Of course, it would  _have_  to be. And a retreat now would seem cowardly. Summoning a smile to replace her frown, she pushed inside. "I was looking for—"

But the Commander did not greet her as she entered. There was no greeting at all. Only her brother's cold glare from the far side of the table.

Irritation blossomed into outright anger at the sight of him. "What in Andraste's name do you think you're doing?"

Everett shrugged, arms clasped behind his back, chest puffed out, as if to better boast that badge of mocking righteousness tattooed upon his steel breast. "Satisfying a curiosity."

"You need to leave. Now," she declared.

From his twitch of a smile, it was clear he understood her truer meaning, but undeterred, he wandered back and forth, scowling down at the war map. "Look at it, sister. Look at all the power you command." He plucked up the Inquisition marker from Haven, and then held it up for examination in the low light streaming through the rear windows. "The Divine was a fool. What could she possibly have hoped to achieve?"

"A peaceful resolution to a senseless war that had dragged on far too long already?" Olivia suggested dryly. "How audacious of her."

Her sarcasm only elicited a humourless grunt. It seemed it was not only her disposition that had changed in the scant hours since they last spoke. There was no sign of his condescending smirk or his sickly 'charm'. While she had awoken with a clearer sense of her own purpose, it seemed that her brother had left his facade on the floor, and that sinister emptiness from his stare had come to the fore.  _This is him_ , she thought, with as much trepidation as melancholy; the part of him that she least wanted to believe sincere.

"Father wrote to me," he continued, "demanding that I attend that ludicrous Conclave.  _Demanding_  it. And for what? So the old crone could have us  _all_  on bended knee before those miscreants? I will  _never_  bend." Everett shook his head with disgust. "Justinia—all of them—got precisely as they were owed. My faith in the Maker's plan, and His in  _me,_  spared me a certain death alongside my lesser brothers and sisters." He lobbed the map marker disdainfully over his shoulder. It landed on its side and rolled across the table, over the edge and onto the floor at Olivia's feet. With an annoyed sigh, she bent to pick it up. "It should have been me," he quietly added.

As she righted, she followed the line of his glare to her hand; not to the right, clutching the leaden piece, but to her  _left._  At once, his contempt became obvious, and Olivia laughed. "Is that all this is? Petty jealousy at your 'lesser sister's lot?" The idea that anyone could actually  _envy_  her circumstances was too ridiculous to take seriously.

" _I_  have served the Order for as long as you have been alive," he muttered, rounding the edge of the table that divided them, chin pressed to his chest and his brow heavy with his thoughts. "You cannot imagine how things have changed. More and more of them coming into their magic every year. More and more of them I had to hunt down. More and more of my brothers, my mentors, our  _leaders_  bowing to their rising demands. And this is how we are repaid for our sacrifice. For our  _protection_. They have ruined  _everything._ "

With his down-turned mouth and his hard, disapproving look, all she could think as he stopped before her was how much he looked like their mother.

"Their magics all smell a little different; did you know that?" he asked, and then laughed dismissively before she could answer. "A little like women that way. Similar, yet distinct. Some sweet. Some…less so." Everett closed his eyes and lifted his nose to the air, sniffing. Olivia reflexively folded her arms across her chest, and when he reopened his eyes, he smiled at her unease before continuing.

"Vael gave me a purpose after it all fell apart. Bestowed on me my rightful title, a generous gratuity and a completely free hand. He asked only  _one_  thing in return: that I find and bring to bear the creature that started this madness. But for two years now, Anders has eluded me. I have tracked him to empty hovels and abandoned camps all over the Marches, into Antiva, all the way to Rivain and back again; always arriving days, sometimes  _hours_  too late. Last spring, I lost his scent entirely. It's like he just…disappeared." Everett stared off over her head distantly, features sinking into a gradual glare. Then he huffed suddenly and shook himself from his contemplation. "Along the way, hundreds of them arose in his place and in his name.  _Weeds,_  begging to be torn out."

For all his rhetoric, he spoke with complete apathy for all the lives he had taken. They were no more to him than notches on a belt, or fodder for stories told over wine with his friends. Hate would have been preferable.

"I tire of your bullshit, Everett," Olivia said; sighing, as if impatiently, to mask her growing distress. "If you've a point to make, make it. And then get out."

" _Maker_ , you've a mouth on you, sister." He shook his head and frowned as he slowly circled her. "Three months back, a woman entered the tavern where I was staying at in Wycome. Dark red hair, eyes of dazzling green. Skin like milk," he half-moaned. "Would have been quite the beauty in her day, before that  _animal_  ruined her. And her scent…burnt sugar, sulphur and a just taste of decay. Sweet and acrid, but then oddly sweet again." Everett sighed, wistfully. "I'd know it anywhere."

_Hawke…_

Her brother smiled. "That sullen look tells me that you know who I mean."

" _You_  followed her here," she said weakly. The floor of her stomach fell away under a hail of guilt. All Hawke's paranoid ravings were true, but it was not the  _red_  Templars she had led here, as Olivia had assumed. It was  _him;_ The Lymer. So badly had she wanted to lay blame at Hawke's feet for what happened to Cullen that she ignored the truth standing before her.

"Accidentally." He shrugged. "From Denerim she went south, and that's where I eventually lost her. That whole place was rotten with their stench. I spent two days in that quagmire trying to pick up her trail, to no avail." Everett's face drew deathly serious. "Vael teeters at the brink of madness. I  _cannot_  return to Starkhaven empty-handed, and my supplies dwindle. When I lost her, I thought to come here. Appeal to my  _dear_  little sister," he said, reaching up and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "And I thought if I could secure the boon of the Inquisition for Vael while I was here, all the better. It would buy me some time and restore some of his favour."

The Inquisitor scoffed, batting his hand away. "You've an odd sense of diplomacy, brother."

"No stranger than your concept of loyalty," he shot back darkly. "Imagine my surprise to find that stench pervaded all the way  _here_. Imagine my greater surprise at finding the very witch who eluded me suckling at your teat with the rest of these beasts."

Olivia's cheeks flushed red with his quick turn to baleful scorn. "And only days later, she's fled." Glancing at the side of Everett's face, there was not the faintest mark where last night had been ripe with blood. "What did you do?"

"I made her an offer. Apparently, she refused _._ " There was the smirk again, at last.

"Damn you, Everett; I  _need_  her!"

"Oh, please! What's one mage when you've a glut of them? She has the blood of  _hundreds_  on her hands, and you would protect her? Despicable!" he sneered. "But it makes no difference now. Run your wild  _Hawke_  chase. I'll wait. See, I have what I need to find her wherever she flees, and sooner or later, I  _will_  take from her  _all_  she has to give me. You cannot keep her from me indefinitely."

The Inquisitor threw her hands up and shook her head. "I cannot believe you so  _arrogant_. This is larger than you and Vael and your petty vendettas! Maker's breath, the Veil is  _torn_ , Everett; do you not simply care, or are you ignorant to it?"

"No!" Everett shouted, stabbing at her chest with a pointed finger. " _You_  are the ignorant one; and naive to what has been happening around you for  _years_. You have been permitted a life of noncompliance, irresponsibility and broken promise. Now, you fall into this power you've no ability to command, imposing your  _simple_  views on the rest of us, as if you alone have the answers to a question  _no one asked of you._  Does it 'kill me' to see the breadth of the power you possess? Certainly! But not as much as watching you flail about, squandering this gift our Maker has  _inexplicably_  given to you!"

The mark in her palm pulsed with her anger, and glowed hotly even through her glove. She thrust it up before him. "You believe me Maker-blessed? Then who are you to question His design? You call yourself a man of faith, but it's not belief in  _Him_  that drives you, brother; it is the promise of some reward you believe  _yourself_  owed. Well, praise be to Him for keeping you from the Conclave, Everett. You said yourself: your life  _is_  your reward. For the rest of us, it is relief from the tyranny you would unleash upon the world in my place."

The unyielding points of his steel-clad knuckles bit into her cheek as, without word or warning, Everett struck at her with the back of his hand. The pain was intense, white and blinding; it forced tears to her eyes and a sharp cry from her lips. She clutched at her face to quench the sting, and her whole body quaked with a fury like she had never felt. Without thinking, she drew back her arm struck at him in retaliation; not with open hand, but with rigid fist. From between her vice of fingers jutted the leaden spines of the map marker she had plucked up earlier. They carved three deep ruts out of his flesh as she swung, from ear to scowling lip. Everett hissed sharply, reeling back with pain and surprise. Olivia watched. Wild-eyed. Panting. Trembling. One by one her fingers, turned bright red from the vigour of her grasp, unfurled, and the flag tumbled back to the floor.

_Thud-thud. Thud._

With that solid clunking, she became abruptly aware of what she had done, and of the folly of her provocation. A voice in her head screamed at her to run, but her feet were made as much of lead. Everett reared up, a guttural growl escaping him as he swung for her once more. Olivia's reflexes took command and she ducked out of the way of another blow intended for her face. Frustration evident, he instead grabbed at her wrist, and used her own momentum to twist her around and pull her against him.

"You dare question  _my_  faith?" he snarled at her ear, torqueing her arm up. Agony seared through her shoulder and she whimpered. "You, who fills her ranks with these snakes, murderers and thieves; these  _mistakes_  of creation. You, who cavorts with  _Tevinters,_  of all things, and the most worthless, dishonest  _failures_  of the Order, like some wretched whore. You betray your Maker  _and_  your family. How must your dear father feel at seeing what a curse you've made of his name?"

Fearing that he would break her arm if she did not break free first, Olivia panicked and struck out behind her with a kick to his leg. The blow caught him by surprise, and sent his leg out from under him. His fall relieved the pressure on her shoulder, but reprieve was spare. On the way down, Everett snatched a handful of her hair, and she cried out with fresh pain as he dragged her to the ground with him. He swore, crawling over her back to keep her down whilst he regained his footing; she bucked and thrashed and kicked to be free. When he was back to his feet, he bent over her with his fingers coiled tightly in her tresses, wrenched her head to the side and then slammed it into the edge of the war table.

"Do you see how disrespectful you have become? What they  _make_  me do to you?" he growled, crouching behind her. "Fear not, dear sister. I'm here now," he whispered. Everett untangled his fingers, smoothed down her hair and kissed the back of her head. "I will bring you back to the Light."

Olivia groaned as he released her, and her trembling, burdensome body slumped to the floor. The battered eye was already swelling shut, and the world growing blurry. A known feeling. She thought vague thoughts of winter forests, dense with fog. Cold ground beneath her, and a stark chill seeping into her bones. Wetness at her face. Rust in her mouth. Fear in her heart.

_Get up_ , the Inquisitor commanded.

But her head was too heavy to lift. Through the thickening fog, she heard the jangling of boots, then the faraway groan of door hinges. A sleepy, desolate silence followed. The last thought she had before her consciousness waned were her father's words, just days before she left for Ferelden.

_You're the capable one._


	28. Reckoning, Part I

The constant pull of the sling around his neck a blunt, tight ache across his shoulders, like a physical manifestation of all the imaginary weights he carried. Pressure upon pressure upon pressure. Just to stand beneath it seemed an impossible ask, but he did with a languid sigh, dropping the report he had been reading to the desk and moving to the window, hoping the fresh air might help clear his head.

The document appeared on his desk sometime after sunrise. He could not remember precisely when, or even who had delivered it, but its contents were alarming.  _An entire patrol, gone_ , he thought dismally, staring down at the tent city sprawled across the glacier far below. Ten more letters he would have to write to ten more bereaved families. His fingers cramped at the mere thought. How many more of them would never make it home? If, when all of this was over, he was among the lucky survivors, he aimed to never have to write another letter for the rest of his life.

Seven dead were a hefty loss, but not what he found most troubling. It was the other three, whose status and whereabouts were presently unknown. It was a new development. They had never taken prisoners before, but Cullen could not believe it a simple act of opportunity; all three of the men taken were former templars. One, he served with in Kirkwall; the other two, greenhorns out of Denerim, barely months into service when the Order fell apart. It was no coincidence, and the Reds could have only one purpose: his men would be turned. Force-fed that red garbage until there was nothing left of them but twisted shells of the men they used to be. If they were lucky, the Maker would grant them a swift flight to His side.

It was impossible not to take such a violation personally. Where would it end? Would Samson not relent until he had corrupted  _all_  that they once stood for? Would they eventually come for him too? Had they already tried?

It often seemed to Cullen that all of life took place at a blade's edge. Trying to walk it straight and true only cut one's feet to the bone. Falling was not only likely, but inevitable, and often arbitrary. It was compassion that saw Raleigh evicted from the Order; there was no room for that in old Kirkwall. Compassion, twisted into desperation, corrupted into resentment had led his old friend to this point. It was hard to reconcile that Cullen's indifference  _then_  might have spared him from a more terrible purpose  _now._  How easily he could have fallen to the other side instead of this one…

_Twisted smile, torn lips, crooked spine jutting out in shards of crimson. Wretched fingers taking what they had no right to take…_

He huffed and rubbed at his face, probing a little carefully at his features. Just to be sure.  _Only a dream_ , he reminded himself, and sighed fool relief as his hand fell away. A dream. Of course it was. Even so, each time he blinked, part of him expected to be back there, trapped inside his tiny prison. Back in that suffocating darkness. That crushing silence. That stale, bloody air.  _Breathe_ , he reminded himself, and filled his suddenly starving lungs until his chest hurt to hold them. He held it in until his body began to tremble, and then let it explode out of him with force, relishing the sound it made. It was real. The air was real. Fresh and cold and clean. Free.

_Only a dream…_

Cullen turned back to the desk, gathered the report up, and headed for the door.

Yesterday's poor weather had made an ice-slick of the bridge across, so he made a quick-but-cautious crossing. Around halfway, he had nervous visions of a careless misstep or an errant gust of wind sending him sailing over the edge to a grisly death in the yard below.  _What a fitting end to a truly_ illustrious _career_ , he thought dryly.  _'Here lies Cullen Stanton Rutherford, who died as he lived — teetering at the edge of command; flailing into oblivion.'_  It was more than a small relief to make it safely to the rotunda on the other side. There, he exchanged a curt nod with Solas on the way through to the Great Hall, where an army of servants worked diligently at putting things back in order.

Cullen scowled at the sight of the place, and the spark of ire that flared up hotly when Trevelyan's face reared in his mind. That self-satisfied smile. That pompous rasp. That hand on Olivia's neck; a deliberate provocation. Whatever his reason, the man seemed intent on making an enemy, and made it easy to oblige.  _What has he told her?_  Cullen wondered.  _What does he even think he knows?_ He was no stranger to rumour; from the moment he set foot in the Gallows, whispers followed after him. The mute indifference with which he addressed his detractors only encouraged them, but it never particularly mattered to him what they said. What slander could they invent that was worse than the truth he carried into his dreams every night? If anything, it made his transition to captaincy easier, for the way it kept his subordinates ever-wary. His younger self even enjoyed it a little. These days, older and wiser, he was more interested in  _earning_  respect than stealing it through passive intimidation. These days, he was less interested remaining isolated from the people around him. Letting go was the hardest part of moving on.

In the alcove between the Hall and the ambassador's office, he paused briefly to properly collect himself. He smoothed down his hair, wiped the sheen of sweat from his face. Rubbed at his eyes and jaw, cringing a little at the last. It was almost three weeks since he had shaved, and the uneven scruff of a beard he sported helped little in implying he had  _anything_  under control. He adjusted the sling, wincing, and tried again in vain at stretching out the ache. Shoulders back, chin up, jaw square. Piece by piece, slipping into his armour. With one last determined breath, he pushed through to the office beyond.

Josephine was alone, standing at her desk and rifling through a stack of documents, muttering to herself. Quill in hand, she scribbled furious notes on her ledger as she moved from item to item.

"She isn't with you," he observed, alert to the tinge of disappointment in his tone. No doubt Josephine was too.

Holding up a finger for him to wait, Josephine finished the line she was scrawling before looking up. "I am yet to see her. Apparently she was up before the sun this morning, whereas I…only arrived at my desk a short time ago," she admitted, with some reluctance. "I am still at a loss for where the time went. One moment, Lady Drummond and I were engaged in a spirited debate over proper dealer etiquette; the next, someone was producing a deck of cards, and—"

_Ugh, I don't care_ , he thought wearily. Only when Josephine's cheeks flushed and she fell sheepishly silent did he realise that the thought had made it to his lips. "Apologies," Cullen said quickly. "I've…much on my mind." He held up the report. "And a matter for council."

"Of course, Commander," she said with a smile, more affable than he deserved. "I shall send for them both at once."

It troubled him that Josephine had not seen her. Their morning meetings had become virtually sacrosanct, and Olivia rarely missed one when she was home. Maybe she  _wasn't_  home. After thwarting her 'escape' yesterday, it would not surprise if she had risen early and made a successful bid of it today. The woman could be frustratingly stubborn when she wished, even—sometimes especially—when it came to her own wellbeing. But perhaps it would be better if she was away this morning. He could not be sure what might come out of him if he was to see her now, with his mind and his heart, his dreams and his reality all at savage odds. Things already frayed unravelled quickly with even the gentlest of pulls.

And when he pulled open the hallway door, Cullen promptly unravelled.

In an instant, he was running.  _Sprinting_. Skidding. Screaming her name. Slipping. Scrambling on his knees up the second bank of steps to where she lay, face down, in a twisted heap upon the stone.

"Olivia…" Soft. Weak. Breath, catching in his throat. Empty lungs hurt more than full ones. Josephine was upon them. "Help me," he demanded, and she rushed to the other side, lifting and turning Olivia over into the waiting crook of his strong arm. Warm.  _Thank the Maker._  But the relief was cursory, and Cullen's gut lurched with violence at the sight of the bloody stains all over her white blouse.

_I know who you are now._

"Get a healer! Go,  _now_!" he barked, swallowing back a lump of sickness.

"O-of course!" Josephine stammered, jumping to her feet and breaking into a run.

Cullen lifted his broken arm over his head, ducked out of the sling and discarded it, and with his hand freed, pushed the matted hair back from her face, grimacing; so much blood. A deep gash rent her left brow in two, and the eye beneath was bulbous, swelled shut and livid. It was her similarly swollen cheek, though, that bore the worse wound. Gingerly tilting her face toward the light, he could make out three distinct indentations and the beginnings of a forth. Deep and diamond-shaped.  _Studs_ , he recognised at once. Ruts of torn flesh trailed out of them down her face. A sweeping strike, delivered by an armoured hand.

He had no time to dwell upon his outrage. Olivia gasped and began immediately to thrash. "No! No-no-no!" she moaned, battering him with his fists.

"Shh-shh, stop. Stop," he said, gently at first, wincing as she beat her balled hands against his splinted arm. "Damn it, Olivia,  _stop!_ " Cullen hissed sharply when she would not relent.

At that, she did settle, but a quiet frenzy remained; a grievous mingling of fear and misery behind her singular stare. She arched her back to crane her head about, panting and whimpering as she tried to identify her surroundings. Finally, as the pieces began to fall into place, she felt around for his hand, and when she found it, squeezed it tightly. Her tensed body slumped into him, and she exhaled with heavy relief.

"It's all right," he assured her, but it was a lie. It was anything but 'right'. There were grazes on the knuckles of her hand, and the bloody fingernails were peeled up from their beds—trifling, compared to her other injuries—but for what they implied.  _She crawled her way here,_  he realised, looking down the hallway. A trail of ruddy smears, as far as he could see, leading toward to the War Room. The place of ambush. How long had she lain there, waiting to be found, before she gave in to fear and tried to save herself?

What had begun as dread knotted up inside of him into a ravenous anger, hungering for blame. Josephine should have done her damned job and been here earlier. Leliana, a patrolling guard, that damned maid of hers;  _someone_  should have been with her, found her, seen what happened or prevented it.

_He_  should have prevented it. Her safety was his responsibility. It was his entire  _purpose_. If he could not protect her inside her own walls, then what use was he?

The chamber door at the end clanged open, accompanied by the sound of shouting. A moment later, Solas was upon them, with a Tranquil herbalist in tow.

"I require room," the elf said, kneeling opposite. It was a quiet demand, but a demand nonetheless. Already, he had taken Olivia's hand away and was probing at her fingers, looking for breaks, Cullen assumed. She watched him work closely, hissing with pain when he touched too close to the tips.

"Olivia." With a finger against her undamaged cheek, Cullen gently brought her attention back on him. "Tell me; did  _he_  do this?"

She said nothing, but did not need to. The slight dip in her right brow; the subtle twitch of her lip; the press of her tongue against the site of her old wound. Reticence was as good as confirmation of a question he need not even have asked.  _Of course_  it was. No one else could have been so brazen. There was no one else whom she would have allowed close enough to her to betray her so viciously. Behind her back, Cullen's fingers flexed into a fist.

"Take her," he said to Solas through ground teeth.

Snatching her hand back, Olivia grabbed a handful of Cullen's cloak as he moved to stand. "Don't," she groaned.

Wary of her wounds, he attempted to pry her fingers open, but her grip was fierce, and when she would not let go, Cullen simply shrugged out of the thing, draped it over her, and left her in the mage's care.


	29. Reckoning, Part II

_The moment they entered the city of the Maker, their sin poisoned it. What had been golden turned black…_

By the time he was out of the office, a startling calm had washed over him. It was not the usual feeling; not that ready stillness he savoured before battle, not the meditative hush of drawing in toward the soothing song. The song was silent, and the chamber of its music empty. The righteous flame, snuffed out into smoke. What remained in its place felt wrong; desolate and dissatisfying, unsavoury and unnatural, like an ocean tide had rushed out to sea and never made it back to shore. He felt disconnected, almost outside of himself. He knew what was coming, and he was powerless to stop it. He did not know even that he wanted to.

He moved silently, but with a shouting glare that scattered all in his way. Through the Hall he exited to the garden, ordinarily a place of repose, but there was no tranquillity in it for him today. Taking the stairs three at a time, he stormed the battlements to the south tower, where Trevelyan was barracked. He burst in on a startled off-duty guard, who pointed him to the furthest bunk from the door. Empty; of course. But it was frightful in its familiarity. Pristine; not a wrinkle, not a bubble. The blanket tucked in tight enough to bounce a sovereign from the tithe box; that was the rule. This was Trevelyan's bed, and this was Cullen's bed. His knuckles stung with the twenty-year phantom bite of Brother Madoc's switch. The old man had favoured a branch of hazel, for its strength and flexibility. For the satisfying snap it made when it whipped across young and clumsy hands.

Cullen tore the bed apart.

He ripped the blanket from its tight tuck, then the sheet. The pillow, he tore from its flimsy linen case. Inside, he found a small journal, its leather cover cracked and the pages yellowed by time. Flicking through it revealed lists of names, places, dates; some struck through, others not. It meant little to him, and he tossed it to the floor. He flipped the mattress over to expose the wooden slat beneath. Nothing. Nor was Cullen looking for anything. It served no purpose even to be here, other than to satisfy a primal urge to undo all that Trevelyan had done, all he had touched with his poisoned hands.

Next, he turned to the unsecured footlocker at the bottom of the bed. When he kicked it, it answered back solidly. Grabbing the underside in his good hand, he upended the contents to the floor. Helmet. Short sword in its sheath. Tome of the Holy Order—Trevelyan's copy was far more weathered than Cullen's had been. Lyrium case and a recently spent philter; Cullen flinched at the sight and the barest whiff of it. Empty satchel, pack of rations, wadded socks. Lastly, out rolled a jar of salve and a balled up shirt, both mottled with fresh bloodstains.  _She wounded him_. The thought gave him a rush of satisfaction.

The young guardsman watched on in obvious discomfort. "C-Can I help ya with s-somethin', C-Commander?"

He turned and moved for the boy, snatching him by the scruff of his tunic and yanking him forward. The lad trembled and squirmed, reeling backward from the Commander's menacing glare. "Where is he?" he demanded.

"I-I ain't s-seen him s-since last n-night!" the guardsman stammered. "I only j-just c-c-came—"

"Useless," he sneered, and released him with a shove. The lad staggered backward, tripped and tumbled over a stool to the floor, which is where Cullen left him.

Outside again, he paced, running his hand through his hair. Trying to think. Trying to calm. Neither was working. The weight on his shoulders pressed down with greater force, and a biting, thrumming pain flared through his left arm. The lower two fingers had gone tingly and numb.  _Breathe_ , he reminded himself, and filled his lungs until they stung with cold. The chill remained in him even after he let go. Ice in his chest, and fire in his mind. He knew what he  _should_  do. Assemble the guard; close the gates; organise a search; bring Trevelyan to proper justice. That is what the  _Commander_  would do. But in Cullen's thoughts, there was no room for anything else but the sight of her lying there. Broken and blistered. Blood on her lips, bloomed on her blouse. Terror in her stare. This was Cullen's nightmare, made real by Trevelyan's hand. All he wanted was undo it. All he wanted was to undo  _him_.

"There."

The brim of a hat appeared from the shadows of his periphery, where moments ago had been nought but mountain and sky. The ashen-faced boy climbed onto the wall and sat, kicking his feet against the rock and humming.  _That damned humming_ …

Cole pointed down at the tavern. "The song in him is slow and sour," he said. "Sad, sort of, but sinister too. Like the singing of swung steel. Scared. It cuts at him, carves him into shapes he can't click together. He  _wants_  the singing to stop, but won't. You can't  _un_ swing something. A sword swings, and it cuts, even when it misses." He hummed. "His rarely misses."

Cullen wasted no time on more of the boy's riddles. Down the stairs he dashed, across the snow-speckled yard, ignoring the salutes of the men out training. His fury was a battering ram, laying siege to the once inviolable, but now haunted sanctuary in his heart. He was a piece of rope, pulled taut and fraying under the strain of too heavy a load. Strand by strand, tearing apart; the weight swinging at the end of the noose, temperance.

It was as the spirit promised. Trevelyan sat at the nearest table, back to the door, drinking. Completely at his leisure. The  _gall_  of it. His lean frame, hunched over a mug, appeared small and unimpressive. Ragged-looking, silvered hair a tousled mess; a far cry from his careful grooming of the night before. He looked now indistinguishable from any other drunk in any other tavern anywhere in Thedas. One more old, broken down soldier in a world already flush with them. The very sight of him was anathema. Cullen's hands clenched at his sides. His scar trembled with his rage.  _Breathe_ , he reminded himself, but was already too far away to hear.

Trevelyan threw a glance over his shoulder as Cullen's shadow fell over him. Three grisly, oozing cuts glistened on his cheek in like a horrific smile, only slightly more terrible than the man's own. "Ever the loyal lap dog," he muttered, labouring under the pull of a drunken lethargy. He turned back to his mug and took a swig and hissed through his teeth after swallowing, probing the inside of his wounded cheek with his tongue. "Little bitch."

Seething, Cullen seized the ridge of Trevelyan's armour at the neck and yanked him from his chair. The man grunted with surprise, his ale spilling all over the place as he crashed to the floor. His head bounced off the wooden planks, and he lay on his back in a daze, rubbing the spot that hit. After a moment, he stopped and glared up.

"Fuck off, pup. Our family matters are none of your concern." His lip curled into a sneer. "No matter where you stick your cock."

Cullen drew back his leg and battered a vicious kick into Trevelyan's side.

Trevelyan curled up and rolled over, clutching at his ribs. "Such obedience," he groaned. Slowly, he unfurled to push up to his hands and knees. "You know, a  _real_  man would have more self-respect than to screw his way into command. Not you. Bending to women seems to be your whole career strategy." A low chuckle shook out of him. "And how do you enjoy my sister's lap, Rutherford? Her maiden flesh must taste sweet to your tongue after all those years labouring under Meredith."

Cullen snarled, slamming another kick in, this time to the other side.

The strike toppled Trevelyan over and sent him thudding into the wall. His repellent laughter twisted into a wheezing cough, and then into a hacking, wet gargle. With an abrupt heave, he voided his stomach—a foamy swill of ale, lyrium and bile—all over himself and the floor. Cullen reeled in disgust. Coughing, slobbering and writhing in his mess, Trevelyan felt around above his head for something to grab onto, and finding the window ledge, pulled himself gradually back to his feet.

He leaned at the wall by the door, craning his head toward the fresh outside air. "Touched a nerve, I see," he muttered, wiping the sick from his mouth on the inside of his glove. Cullen's eyes narrowed on the knuckles, and the pinkish hue that still tinged the shining armour studs. Trevelyan paused, noticing the fixed glare, and he snickered. "Oh, how she spat at me with that mouth of hers." Then he smirked, adding, " _Someone_  had to teach her some respect."

"Shut up."

"Tell me; does my little Livvy ever spit at you too?" Trevelyan pressed. "Or have you taught her to swallow it down, like a good little whore?"

In two strides, Cullen crossed the fouled floor, and without thinking, slammed his splinted arm against Trevelyan's throat. A dizzying, searing pain exploded through his fractured bones. He grunted, but choked back the yell that wanted desperately to blast out of him, refusing to gift the man he satisfaction of his pain.

"I told you to shut your filthy mouth," he growled, driving his elbow down.

"Settle down…Rutherford…" Trevelyan wheezed. "It was…only her face." He smirked. "Don't dogs…take their bitches…from behind? You won't…even notice."

With that final taunt, the very last thread holding Cullen together shredded apart. There was a rush and a roar inside of him, a delinquent tide surging in to fill the empty chamber with an ocean of rage. The strangled remains of his temperance plummeted into the depths, and in its place, an old, long-buried feeling washed to the surface. Freed, at long last, from its derelict tomb.  _Foul and corrupt are they…_

His body was a vessel, an instrument of his anger. The world around him became mute against the scream of his righteous indignation. He drew back his fist and pounded a brutal punch into Trevelyan's face; felt the crunch of cartilage shattering under his fist. A sanguine fountain gushed from his broken nose, and Trevelyan  _laughed;_  the kind of breathless mirth of a man fallen into some great and unexpected fortune. With a strength and control that contradicted his apparent drunkenness, he bucked forward, throwing Cullen off balance, then dipped down, twisted and rammed forward with his shoulder. The blow caught Cullen square in the centre of his chestplate; he staggered backward, doubled over but only barely winded. With a low roar, his head shot up and he lunged forward again.

All that followed after was a hazy stupor.

On the battlefield, he coached precision, discipline, self-preservation and control. This was not that. This was wild and unconstrained. This was the feckless grappling of a man half his years; of an untested knight who should have known better. He lost track of where he was from moment to moment as the world blurred around him. Wood became dirt became snow became stone under his feet and beneath his back. Flashes of pain flared, hot and quick, like the sear of cold meat dropped into a greased pan; sizzling, spitting, fizzling out as fast. A taste of blood in his mouth. The sting of it in his eyes. The two of them staggered about one another, punching, strangling, scuffling, with no clear advantage on either side. Both blind by separate purposes; both drunk on separate vices.

With every strike of his fist he saw her face, broken and bruised; the flower of blood over her heart; the desolation in her eyes. He saw the faces of every mother, father, sister, brother, daughter and son that he had sworn an oath and then failed to protect. He saw the monstrous faces of his fallen brothers, touched by the finger of greed and malice to become something hated and opposed. He saw his own face grinning back at him, vicious and cold and awash in vile redness. With every strike of his fist, he chased absolution. And with every strike of his fist, he fell farther short of it.

" _Enough!"_

Olivia's voice cut through the howling frenzy with the resounding clarity of Chantry bells singing out over city streets, and it stopped Cullen cold. He blinked a few times to clear the blood and the fever from his eyes, and the world fell into immediate focus. Beneath him was Trevelyan's sprawled body, his face a grisly visage of loosed savagery. All around, people had gathered to watch the spectacle. Patrons, blacksmiths, priests and nobles. The ambassador, the spymaster, the soldiers sparring in the circle. Dozens of them, standing in grim awe, whispering to one another out of the corners of their mouths; unable to tear their attention from the sight of the Inquisition's  _esteemed_  Commander, brawling in the dirt like some common street thug.

At their centre, storming down the steps with a flank of armed guards was the Inquisitor, her stare locked on him too; distant and forbidding, furious and cold. Expression, hard and unreadable. Crimson smudges and shadowy bruising left behind by a perfunctory mending only added to her severity.

"Get them up," she barked, fierce in her command.

Two guards seized Cullen beneath the arms and hauled him to his feet, and as soon as he got there, all his exhausted body wanted to do was crumble. Myriad pains loomed like distant drum beats, throbbing, humming, and gaining in fervour as they drew clearer with the lifting fog of war. Soon all he could feel was a relentless pounding, a scorching agony tearing through his broken arm. Cullen clamped his teeth down upon his lip to keep from screaming, and hugged the arm tightly to his chest.

Another two guardsmen picked Trevelyan up, and his tall, wiry frame hung limp between them, feet dragging on the ground. A wheezing rattle built in the back of his throat into a sickening rattle, and then he spat another viscous wad of purplish gore to the ground at Cullen's feet. A shard of tooth gleamed in its centre.

"You think…yourself…better, pup? You aren't…" he panted at Cullen. His sagging head tilted toward the Inquisitor, and he peered up at her from beneath his bloody brow. There was a faint hint of a broken-toothed grin. "You see now…sister? What he is? An unprovoked…attack…on an unarmed man! Is that really…the kind of man…you want…at your side?"

"Certainly not, brother," the Inquisitor replied, cold glare fixed rigidly on Cullen. He hung his head. "I want him stripped of his armour and shackled. Under no circumstances is he to be let from his chains."

Beside her, Trevelyan's wheezing became a snorting, wet laugh. "Good…That's it, Livvy."

"When he is secured, have the Guard Captain make travel arrangements," she continued evenly. "As soon as he is fit, the Knight-Commander is to be delivered back to Starkhaven."

"Wait… _What_?" The smugness dissipated instantly, and Trevelyan's head shot up. " _Me?"_ he snarled, incredulous. "You would choose…that  _dog_ …over your own  _blood?"_

"There is only one dog here, Lymer," she retorted, labouring the last. "Escort him to his cage, and have an apothecary see to him. I won't bear the burden of his leash a moment longer than necessary."

"Vael will kill me, Olivia. Is that…what you want?" he implored, fighting against the pull of the guards behind him. "Do you  _hear_  me?"

"I hear you, brother." For the first time, the Inquisitor turned to look at him. "Have faith, Everett. You will have ample time on your journey home to beg for more of your Maker's mercy. Only pray that  _He_  hears you as well."

"You treacherous…little bitch…" he hissed. "Faithless…fucking… _whore!"_

Trevelyan thrashed and growled, snarled and spat and drooled with bloody acrimony the whole way to the dungeon, but the Inquisitor said nothing in reply. Arms folded and stony-faced, she watched them haul him away without another word. The moment he was clear, turned to the loitering masses and clapped her hands together. "Back to work! All of you!  _Now_!" she shouted, and with eyes downcast, all began to scurry away.

"Inquisitor…." Cullen rasped, not even knowing what he would say next. All the anger in him had washed out, and left only agony and shame behind in its wake. One old feeling replacing another. Pain made him groggy, made his stomach churn with stormy violence. It turned him into a useless weight that could no longer stand, and he collapsed to his knees before her. Where he deserved to be.  _Forgive me_ , he thought; but all that made it from his lips was a groaning cry as another hot, torturous spasm rippled through his arm.

"Why is he still here? For Andraste's sake, get him to the infirmary!" she snapped.

Leaving no room for debate, she took to the stairs back up to the Great Hall, while Cullen's men lifted him back to his feet and coaxed him toward the rear steps down. He went with them, not willing nor unwilling, watching over his shoulder as she ascended. At no point did she hesitate, or even look back.

Looking back, it seemed, was all Cullen knew how to do.


	30. Forging

A life was not unlike a piece of iron. It began formless, shapeless, without any specific purpose. An untouched lump of raw possibility, waiting to be crafted into something finite, but worthwhile. With heat, it could be made malleable. Under the hammer, it took shape. Its potential was limited only by the artistry and imagination of the smith who crafted on it. It could be forged into a weapon, or a shield; a fork for tilling fields; a hammer or a scythe. All things good and valuable, humble or extravagant. In the hands of a willing craftsman, a mundane piece of iron was a gift, and with time and tending, it could become a thing of character, if not beauty.

In the hands of a fool, it was little more than dross.

It was late; the sky, full pitch and the moon high overhead, past the mid-point in its nightly crossing. Most of Skyhold was long asleep, but having spent the remains of the day doing nothing but rest, Cullen was more restless than ever, least of all of body. He wandered at an ambling pace through the Hold, head and eyes cast down in avoidance, but those who lingered paid him little mind. Few, he suspected, even recognised him without his cloak and armour to set him apart. The spurious anonymity was both refreshing and welcome.

Like the garden before it, he came upon the Chantry deserted, and that too was a welcome relief. The door swung closed behind him and he let the silence within envelope him like a soothing shroud. Standing amongst it in perfect stillness, eyes closed, he drank eagerly it in. Breathing. Incense spiced the air; warm, if a scent could be that, and there was something restorative about it. It was like being enfolded in history itself; something elemental, and older than he would ever be. There was joy in being a part of something larger than a single life. His personal sins were trifling to the larger design, and one day, they would be absorbed and absolved by time itself; rent from his mortal flesh into memories that would burn up, disperse and then fade away. So he hoped.

Cullen moved to the closest bench and sunk, pushed to his knees by the hand of penitence. He could not recall the last prayer he had said that was not a veiled curse uttered in frustration, and certainly not when he had last taken knee simply for the sake of his soul. Those first few years in Kirkwall, he visited the cathedral with some regularity, but found little succour there. It was too big, too empty, too oppressive. Rather than bringing him closer to his faith, it only to isolated him from it. As his tenure in the Gallows dragged on and his personal time dwindled to nothing, it was little disappointment when those visits to fell to the wayside. Now, he wished he had made more of an effort. Good habits were difficult to form, and bad ones harder still to break.

Kneeling now, he was reminded of a summer, over twenty years gone. The last one he spent at home. He was twelve years old, and his father took him to apprentice at the forge. It was a last ditch effort to steer him from the Templar life he was determined to pursue. Though they did not expressly deny him, his parents made their doubts known. His mother worried that he would be hurt, or homesick; his father worried that it would 'change' him. Cullen could not comprehend his parents' concerns, but out respect, humoured them.

Yet, for all his father's patient and careful instruction, Cullen could not make those lessons stick. He hated the forge, the heat and the stink of it. He hated the burns and the tiny shards of metal he was always pulling from his fingers at the end of the day. Everything he put his hand to turned out  _wrong_. Thick in places, thin in others, lopsided or misshapen. Simple tasks his father could accomplish with little effort and only two heats, Cullen would take ten heats only to fail. One day, he might wield a sword with confidence, but it was made clear that summer that he would never  _craft_  one.

It came back now with perfect clarity. The ringing echo of the hammer pounding iron, and the way it shook his arm all the way to the shoulder. The heat on his face, the taste of metal and the smell of coal on the air. And the insolence. He saw plainly how he never really  _tried._ That day he nearly drowned, four years earlier, his mind was made up. His life was the Maker's, and his heart set upon the Order. Rather than apply himself to an education he viewed as a waste, Cullen put in only the minimum effort, making a great showing of clumsiness and ignorance in the hopes that his father would yield.

And he did. Cullen was not forced back to the forge at the end of the season, and the next spring, his parents permitted him to leave for training as he had wanted. Now, kneeling before Andraste, not as knight of the Order but merely as a man laid bare, Cullen looked back on his life and wondered. Had his father relented because he saw his son's resolve and wanted him to be happy? Or had his father relented because he saw how his son was already 'changed', and like a bad piece of iron, not worth the effort it would take to turn him into something of value?

Unbeknownst, that summer had cast its shadow over all his life. After the annulment of Kinloch, the Knight-Commander ordered him back to the monastery for 'rehabilitation'. It was to be a time of focus and meditation, so that he might heal in a more conducive environment, without the rigours of active duty to distract. It was to take 'as long as he needed'—as long as it took for the Brothers to deem him fit to return, or not at all. But so sure was Cullen of his righteousness, and so deeply rooted in his hate, that he never applied himself to healing. He meditated on his anger rather than seeking peace from it. Rather than finding solace in the Chant, he used it to bolster his bitterest convictions. For half a year, he put in the barest of efforts, and made a showing on conformity so that they would send him back. Nothing in him changed. He returned to duty misshapen and wrongly forged, and Greagoir, like his parents, soon sent him away.

In the crafting of a weapon, tempering was vital. It was where its strength and durability were imparted. A blade cooled too slowly might be strong, but dull; too quickly and it might be hard, but brittle. Tempering was the balance of even heat and even cooling. But Cullen was no skilled smith, not of metal, and not of life. He shied from the heat that would make him malleable, fearful of the change it would cause. Each time life forced him to the fire, he immediately quenched it; doused his thoughts in bile, or drowned his feelings in brine so that they could not grow. Years of it had left him hard, brittle, and susceptible to breaking.

The scream of hinges cut through the silence and shook him from his morose contemplation. Cullen bowed deeper down into the collar of his coat and turned his head away, hoping—however unlikely—to remain anonymous. There was a pause, long enough that his neck began to prickle hotly, before the door cried out again into the quiet. At his back came the groan of leather, the shuffle of someone settling down at the rearmost bench. He sighed softly, debating staying, when he caught a trace of something else on the air beyond the incense. Rose oil, and a touch of thyme. For the hundredth time that day alone, he had to remind himself to breathe.

"I waited for you," he said in a prayer-like whisper. "All evening."

"Twice I made it to your door and no further," she replied, matching his tone; it was like music to him. "It seems every time I come to your office, we end up in an argument. I did not want another fight today."

"Nor I."

The ensuing silence that settled over them was anything but a comfort. Despite having spent much of the night thinking on what he would say, nothing came to him now. Cullen tilted his head toward the sound of her soft breathing, stealing a surreptitious glance and hoping that the sight of her might inspire some clarity, but all it inspired was melancholy. Like him, she kept her head down, rubbing at her folded arms to stave off a chill; whether without, or within, he could not say.

In the end, it was she who broke the stalemate. "I would have handled it."

"I'm sure," he replied, and immediately winced. Even to his ear, it sounded glib, though it was not his intent.

"Why, then? Why engage him? Especially in your…condition."

The hesitation was vexing, though it was probably not her intent, either. "To which 'condition' are you referring?"

"Cullen…"

"What?"

She huffed with frustration. "It was my problem to handle.  _My_  battle. You need not have involved yourself."

He laughed tersely. "Your battles  _are_  my battles; that literally is my obligation."

"Training and commanding my army, yes. Not… _this_. You know Everett  _meant_  to embarrass you, and you allowed him to provoke you. You gave him precisely what he wanted."

It was his turn to huff. "I'm not an  _idiot_ , Olivia. Of course I know; he was hardly subtle about it! But what he did, and then the way he  _spoke_  of you—"

"They're only words, Cullen. What could he have possibly said that was worth all this?"

Cullen's jaw clamped down tight and he shook his head. For a moment, he could almost taste the poison. "Nothing I could ever repeat. To you, or otherwise."

Olivia panted out a laugh, a nervous twitch of a thing, bleak and barren. "I'm sure I can guess, anyway."

"Probably so."

With that, Cullen mustered the courage to turn and face her. A light smattering of yellowish bruises around her eye and a new scar that severed the arch of her left brow were the only physical reminders left on her face, and he was as thankful for that as she surely was herself. The intangible scars were more troubling. The way she pulled back from the bench as soon as he approached it. The far-flung stare she cast around the room, never resting in one place for too long, seemingly looking everywhere but at him. The nervous bite at her lip, and the sound of her fingernails picking at her draw callus. The few inches of wood between them might as well have been a solid wall. He sighed.

"I am not proud of the way I handled myself; of course I'm not. Or the way I have handled anything of late. The fact is, when I found you that way…" Cullen shrugged, helpless. How could he ever explain his visions without sounding a madman worthy of her contempt? "It broke me. And if I had the day over, I cannot say with confidence that I would do things differently." He inhaled sharply, holding the warmly scented air inside for as long as he could, hoping that when he let go, it might take his sins out with it. It was pushed out by the single thing he had tried and failed to say earlier. Cullen hung his head. "Forgive me."

Another pendulous silence followed, so thick and suffocating, it was as if all sound had been smothered from existence. So complete, he thought for a moment that she had left him to drown in it, and had to peek up to ensure she was still with him.

"You need not apologise," she whispered at last. "I should be grateful that you would still defend me at all, and instead I lash out. You aren't even the one I'm upset with. Furious with  _him_ , certainly, but even more ashamed of myself. None of this would have happened had I only listened."

"No doubt he counted on your trust."

"And I gave it without question. Some 'Inquisitor' I am." Olivia shook her head and swallowed hard. "My name must sound profane against your ear after all you have suffered by my hand."

"I've not," he answered adamantly. "And I  _must_  beg your forgiveness. If not for this, then for the terrible things I said when last we spoke. Unfair and unwarranted things." Olivia glanced up, brow wrinkled with a cautious curiosity. "Olivia, Cole came to me last night. At the time, I was unsure if it was even real. To be honest, it's still not clear. Dream and truth seem less distinct than ever for me currently…" Cullen trailed off and then gave another small shrug. "In this instance, I'm not sure I care."

"Cullen, what are you talking about?"

"The lyrium, Olivia," he said, rubbing at his temples as he strained to remember precisely how the conversation had gone, but it was all a jumble of riddles. "Something about bringing you a 'little blue key?' And you being angry at his suggestion that you give it to me…And apparently he was frightened at upsetting you, so he—"

"—made me forget," she finished for him, gasping, and he confirmed with a nod.

The slightly confused frown deepened into a more pained furrow. She rolled back onto her heels and stood up to pace. One hand covered her mouth, holding back what were either breathy sobs or hard laughs, or some strained combination of the two. Cullen winced as he struggled to his feet also, tender muscles not eager to let him forget the day's folly.

"I have been driving myself mad trying to understand," Olivia muttered absently. "How would I even arrive at such a conclusion?  _Why_  and  _how_  would I— _could_  I—do that you? I knew. I knew what it meant. Fear is no excuse. I would  _never_  intentionally jeopardise—" She stopped, the hand fell away and she spat angrily, "That little bastard. Compassion, my  _arse_. How long did he intend to let me suffer like this?"

Cullen bit back on an entirely inappropriate laugh. There had always been something strangely charming about the way she cursed; unexpected, and sort of child-like in its innocence. "It would appear this was how he meant to make it right. It would also appear that he is less afraid of me than of you." He frowned. "I shall try to overlook how professionally damning that sounds."

"I don't understand," she groaned, rubbing feverishly at her brows with both hands. "Did you even need it? Or was the whole thing a lie for his amusement?"

"There is no simple answer, Olivia. Other than to say that I needed it then as much as I need it now, as much as part of me will  _always_  need it." Cullen scratched at his neck, struggling to think how he could explain a thing that defied explanation; something he had not had to think about in years. "What you saw that night… That is the Wrath of Heaven. It is a purge; within and without. And, it is a last resort. Typically, if a knight calls upon the Wrath, then it is because he is…already lost," he finished quickly. "The purge itself may not necessarily kill him, but  _always_  leaves him empty. Vulnerable. If he is already weak, then the Wrath of Heaven may well be his mortal sacrifice. It is more than six months since my last dose. Believe me when I say, I am weak." His features drew grave, thinking back on that night; that fight. The monstrousness of his enemy. The terror of losing. The terror at being lost. "I should not have even attempted it. I had no other recourse."

"But Cullen, I didn't  _give_  it to you. If that was true—"

"It was enough," he cut in. "Think of the fire you can build with only breath and embers."

"And you had to survive that long first." With a hesitant smile and a small shrug, she added, "How weak can you be?"

The truth made him lighter, made him bolder; the smallest taste made him crave more. Cullen mirrored her smile, and nervously reached out with his thumb to trace the broken arch of her scarred brow. "I showed you today how weak I am."

She froze and inhaled sharply. "Cullen…"

"That night, at camp, you told me that you needed to…put your feelings aside. I understand your reasons, I do. I even agree it would probably be best. But I must ask… Is that still what you want?" His brows knit together at the mounting tremble as his fingers grazed her flushed cheek. "For I must confess, I have tried every day, almost since we met, not to think of you that way. It seems the harder I try to ignore them, the more insistent my thoughts become."

Olivia grabbed his shaking hand, stilling it. The hesitant bite on her lip returned as she examined his bruised knuckles and gingerly caressed them with her thumb. "Nothing in my life has ever been about what  _I_ want, Cullen."

"And if that were to change?" Heart pounding, he stepped over the bench and pressed forward until he was close enough that the giddying warmth of her enveloped him absolutely. "What do  _you_  want, Olivia?"

Looking up at him, blue-green eyes sparkling with golden warmth, she said simply, "You."

"Then you have me."

And with that, he kissed her. At long last, he kissed her, with all the greed and desperation of the first breath after surfacing; with the unquenchable thirst of a fire inside that could never be doused. He kissed her with all the potency of his thundering heart, even as his knees grew weak with the effort. It was like rousing from a life-long sleep and plunging, headfirst, into an endless abyss of pure longing. Cullen pushed her back to the wall; something solid, to stop them both from falling. Olivia gripped his face in both hands, driving her fingers through his beard, up into his hair. A soft groan escaped him; first, at what a relief it was to finally  _feel_  her, and then at the frustration of his useless arm slung between them, when all he wanted to feel was  _her._

He kissed at her scar as he long had fancied, lip to chin to jaw, trailing down her neck and up again. Those fingers in his hair flexed and tugged as he mapped it out, and she spoke his name in a gasping whisper against his ear.  _Maker grant me strength_ , he thought weakly, and laughed just once before pressing his mouth against her sigh and silencing her with his tongue. His own fingers skimmed down the delicate warmth of her neck, roamed with shy curiosity over her alluring curves to her waist, where he slid his arm inside her coat to pull her more tightly against him. At her back, his hand found the untucked hem of her blouse, and without hesitation, slipped boldly beneath. Olivia gasped, whimpered, quivered and weakened; he did the same. Beneath his ice-cold hand, the silky arch of her bare back was inviting, inciting, and scalding hot like forge fire. Instinctively, he snatched his hand back and broke away from the intensity of the heat, shaken and breathless.

Cullen pressed his forehead against hers. "I'm sorry," he panted, and placed a fragile, trembling kiss to her lips before he sighed and rolled away. When his back hit the wall, he slid down it to the ground; the feel of his own hand running through his hair was far less pleasurable.

Olivia cleared her throat and followed to a crouch beside him. "Sorry, because you made a terrible mistake, or—"

"No. No, not that," he replied at once, offering a quick smile, but it was met with a dubious frown. "It's… Olivia, there are…things that you don't know. About me, about…what I have done—" Cullen shook his head and looked away. "I fear I am not the man you think."

Olivia expelled a pensive breath as she settled all the way down to the floor. "Cullen, how long have we known each other now?"

"Six months or so."

"Six months…" she echoed. "My brother could not hide his true colours from me longer than a single day. Barely longer than a single conversation, if I'm perfectly honest. You are far less a stranger to me than he is." She placed her hand on his elbow. "I know the Order is not always kind to her sons. But whatever it is in your past that troubles you, you left it there for a reason. I know who you are,  _now._  That's the only man I care about."

Cullen's attention snapped at once onto those six words, plucked straight out of his nightmare, and yet spoken from her lips, they took on a different meaning entirely. One he desperately wanted to believe in. And perhaps it could be that simple. The only difference between  _wanting_  and  _having_  was the action—or not—taken in between. An action even as simple as turning one's head…

And so he did, and never knew until that moment, watching the way the candle glow kissed across the curve of her cheek, that a man could be envious of light. "It has been a great many years since I have wanted anyone in my life. I never anticipated that would change," he said, smiling feebly. "I think I may just…need a little time."

"I think I've demonstrated my ability to be patient," she replied, and his frail smile became a genuine laugh. "Cullen, you can tell me anything, or you can tell me nothing. I will never ask. Whatever you need, I'm here. All I need is this." Olivia lifted his arm over her head and slid across beneath it to nestle, close and warm, against his side.

Cullen sighed again, but happily this time, as his arm came to rest around her, and when his fingertips found the slash of bare skin at her hip, he did not shy from it. Rather, he resolved to let her heat warm him through, so that it might, with time, temper him into something stronger.


	32. Starting

She starts awake out of a black sleep; dreams, gone missing, like a wine she can still taste but not remember drinking.  _Alive_. Of all the bad habits she has ever had, living is proving the hardest to give up.

Her head feels fuzzy and far away; her body, a tight coil of dread. The bed smells of earth and sweat, like a hard day's work. A coarse blanket itches against her bare skin.  _Bare?_  She pushes the cover off. An expanse of flesh stares back, pale as moonlit desert, shadowed by grazes and tracts of bruising. Only her smalls remain, and tight bandages that circle her chest and make it hard to breathe. New injury? Or the old one, not healed right? Her hands, too, are wrapped in dressings, bloody; her head, wrapped in a smoky haze of broken thoughts.

The stillness of the place strikes her. All she hears is the crackling of fire. The babble of water outside. Wind shaking through the trees. It sounds like loneliness.

An inch at a time, she unfurls muscles and joints that have grown stiff with sleep. Rolling onto her back, a silent scream escapes. A dry-throated, gasping whimper; voice cut by knives, stabbing up her spine. Arching up on trembling legs, she reaches around thinking to yank the blade out, but finds nothing. Only hot skin, stretched over a thrumming welt that covers her lower back. Tender, even to the gentlest touch.

Through the pain, she tries to focus. Tries to reach for the calming place inside. The source. She tries to draw from the well, to channel it through her fingertips and out into her broken body. Sweat beads on her brow. Her thighs burn and quiver as they struggle to keep her aloft. All she finds inside is screeching emptiness. The magic does not come.  _Drained_. With a shuddering sob, she forces her body over before her legs give out. The bed groans and shakes as she drops to the mattress, hip-first and hard. Another voiceless cry comes with the impact. There is so little left; how can it hurt this much?

_I will take everything_.

The forgotten promise strikes, asp-like from the haze, and her fingers fly to her forehead, searching. They feel out every inch of skin for the brand she is sure to find, but doesn't. Only cold sweat and stinging scrapes. Yet she still feels him there. His serpent kiss. Chapped lips and dripping venom. The crush of his steel at her hips and around her throat. Fear comes at once, dogged, nipping at her tired heels. She must keep moving, always.

Wiping her wet eyes on the back of a bandaged hand, she glances around the room, trying to place herself inside a place she has never seen before. Unfamiliarity is the only thing familiar. Skyhold was the first place in months that she woke up twice in a row, but this place is far removed from that stone monstrosity. All wooden walls and dusty windows. Sparsely furnished. Lived in, but utilitarian. The only decoration, the tattered hide of some poor beast sprawled before the fireplace. Undignified. Conquered. She sympathises.

Across the room, by the open door, her attention falls to the table and single chair. Her clothes hang limply over the chair back; the skin of some far poorer beast. She counts the distance as ten steps, give or take, and slides one foot off the bed. It hits the floor with a leaden thump she barely feels. The next goes after it, and like a counterweight, pulls her body upright. The ache in her back becomes pronounced; a stunning, throbbing pressure building quickly on her spine. Gritting her teeth, she stands, and her numb feet buckle and roll outward. Tingling pinpricks shoot up her calves; intense, somehow drowning out every other pain. The room spins, and she throws her hand to the wall to catch herself. Wobbling, whimpering, she waits it out. Eyes fixed on the chair.  _Focus_. She has come so far on so little. Ten more steps is nothing.

There is no relent from the lies she tells herself. Each step is excruciating, like learning to walk all over again on legs too heavy for her wilted frame, that pull and twist and tangle. By halfway, she is breathless, and the sheen on her forehead runs in rivulets down her neck. The last step—the fifteenth—is a desperate lurch as she throws herself into the chair and collapses over the table, huffing and exhausted.  _Let him come_ , she thinks wearily, dismally. Let him come and take what he wills. Her body, her mind, her magic; let him have it all. Let him cut away these mortal pains, these dire thoughts. This guilt, this grief, this endless heartache. Let him come and break her of this last, most terrible habit.

Cold air snakes about her clammy skin, and she breaks out in violent shivering. The fog creeps back to settle over her, and sleep beckons. Eternity calls from across the shredded Veil. She is on the brink of yielding when a new sound penetrates the lonely din. Footsteps. The opposite of loneliness. Instinct, stronger than apathy, snaps her out of ennui. She spies a blade left lying on the table, and her hand closes around the grip. With a last gasp of bravery and strength, she bolts up and turns to face death, the blade thrust out before her, trembling. Laughable.

But death does not laugh. Death stands frozen in the doorway, his arms full of firewood, and a tense standoff begins. She studies his face, trying to match his features with the indistinct shadow in her mind, but nothing fits together the way she wants it to. Jaw too square. Cheeks, too gaunt, and disguised by a trimmed beard. Brown hair, long; tied back from his face. And the eyes… Not soft, but not hard, either. Dark, but not empty. Not the black wells of mocking hate she sees when she closes her own. It is not  _him_ , but he is a stranger still.

"Easy," he says, watching her as closely, narrowed gaze dancing between the blade and her face. There is a sense of urgency in him, which she feels is a ruse. He must know that she is no physical match. He is deliberating. "I don't want to hurt you." Voice like wet sand; deceptively firm, easy to get trapped in. Pacifying. "Put it down."

She trembles. Rigid despair and a palm pressed to the tabletop are the only things keeping her up. The knife arm screams with the effort. And he sees. He sees how weak she is and inches forward, never breaking eye contact. She trembles; with rage, with fear, with frustration at the emptiness inside. Traitorous magic, fled when she most needs it. When a mere foot separates him from the point of the blade, and he abruptly throws the wood aside. It is the sound of it crashing to the floor, more than his movement, that startles her, and she jabs forward impulsively in alarm. With staggering speed, he redirects her hand to the side and clamps his down over her wrist. In a fluid motion, he twists his body into her, pulling forward at the same time until she is pressed against his back and her arm is pinned between his ribs and elbow. It is little effort for him to then pry apart her fingers and wrest the dagger from her grasp.

It happens so quickly that she can barely understand what has happened, but is overwhelmed by what a great relief it is to lose. The pretence of strength is exhausting. As soon as he loosens his grip, she falls back into the chair. A blast of pain that shatters through her, but she chokes it down, numbly awaiting whatever comes next.

"Hungry?"

—oOo—

His name is Dash. At least, it's what he calls himself.

As she dresses, he sets about making a meal and tells her how he found her in the water, about a half-mile downstream, battered and near-dead upon the rocks at the bottom of the ridge. He guesses she fell, and maybe she did, but she cannot recall it. Her last clear memory is of riding, without end and no plan in mind beyond escape. Night passing into day, back into night again. Mountains bleeding into forests, and the sameness of the sky above. Underneath her bloody bandages, she can almost feel the reins and the ache in her crooked fingers from holding on so tight. The cutting bites of leather slicing into the meat of her palms as they slip her terrified grasp. The welt on her back chimes in with a throb, and she frowns…  _Thrown?_ She never was very good with horses. Or people, as it turns out.

The smell of the river lingers in her clothes, musty and still slightly damp in places. Stained where her many abrasions bled through, and torn around the knees and elbows. Everything fits more poorly than she remembers. Even tied as tight as she can make them, her trousers ride low on her bony hips, and her shirt falls back off her shoulders, strangling until she tugs it back down. They might as well be someone else's entirely. A borrowed skin; one she is not suited to wear. Nor even wants to, anymore.

Even once dressed, she cannot shake the chill and pulls the chair toward the fire. Closer but not too close. There she perches, knees hugged to her chest, watching him cautiously, all the while lying to herself that she can run at moment's notice. Dash seems unfazed by it, as he casually spears gutted trout onto rods and props them over the flame to roast. While they cook, he busies himself by collecting up the wood and stacking it in a tidy pile by the hearth. After, he goes to the chest at the foot of the bed and pulls out a fresh shirt. She averts her eyes as he strips off his sweaty, filthy one, but the man exhibits no such shame. He ignores her presence so thoroughly that she begins to wonder if she is there at all, or if this is all an addled creation of her dying mind as she lays still in that river, slowly freezing to death. She cannot decide yet which fate is preferable.

Next, Dash goes to the tall cabinet on the rear wall and pulls out a plate and a bowl to bring back to the hearth. Satisfied upon checking that the fish are done, he slides the charred fish from the skewers, one into each waiting vessel. Hissing and swearing under his breath. Sucking on one thumb, he holds out the bowl to her and shrugs, almost apologetically.

"Lost my only fork, so…be careful."

Her tentative fingers latch onto the bowl's edge and she snatches it away from him the moment he lets go. The last on a long list of pains upon waking, hunger bays in her guts like a prowling wolf as her eyes feast first and then the smell hits her. Salivating, she begins to tear the scalding fish apart with her fingers, but as she raises the flaky flesh to her lips, she stops herself. Hunger reminds her of Antiva. Hateful place… A country full of whores and princes and little in-between. She had never been so starved in her life—and not only for food. Looking back, she would have rather have gone hungry. Nothing came free there. Out of money, they were forced to beg and steal just to survive. They traded in favours. Favours for favours, never knowing how or when they would be called in.

Anders tried to keep her out of it as much as possible. Some nights he would leave for hours and come back in the morning broken. Shivering, mute, matted with blood. All for a lump of stale bread. The day they left Kirkwall behind them, he told her never to look back. Every time she doubted, every time she faltered, he reminded her again.  _Don_ _'t look back, Em. There's only pain that way._ Never talk about it, either. She would never know for sure the things he was made to do, but neither could he always keep her clean. And it happened so gradually. Neither of them noticed how much blood and shit they were caked in, or how much of themselves they had traded away, until the day they finally left for good. Flesh recovers. Dignity never really does. Broken trusts, even mended, never quite look the way they used to.

"How much?" she asks. The first words to pass her lips since waking and they tear a swathe out of her parched throat on the way out. Dash gives a quizzical look. Stretched out leisurely on the rug, propped up on an elbow. Conqueror atop quarry. His ignorance can only be condescension. With a terse sigh, she nods at the bowl. "What do you want?"

"Ahhh, I see. I cannot aid a stranger without expectation of reward. That it?"

Now he mocks. "Nothing is free."

"A sad world you live in." Dash shakes his head, picking apart his meal with more restraint than she. "All I want," he says, though muffled by mouthful, "is to see you well and on your way."

_Bullshit,_  she thinks.

When still she does not eat, he rolls his eyes and sighs. "Had I a desire to harm you, I would have already. You were out for two days. I could have done anything I wished. I could  _now._ We both know you could not stop me." He shrugs again. "Seems you just have to trust me. You've little other choice."

It is a startlingly frank admission, and takes her aback.  _Maybe he did,_  she thinks, and yet cannot convince herself of it. He is not like the predators she knows. More a scavenger, but she is not yet dead. Her hand trembles, fighting not to shove the meat into her mouth. But the smell, and the  _hunger_ … On the verge of angry tears, she relents, and feels the sound relief of another battle lost. That first mouthful does not wait on her tongue long enough to taste it, and she goes quickly back for another messy scoop. Juice runs down her wrist and chin. Fresh and hot and  _good._  The ill-fated trout glares with a sullen, milky eye as she defiles it; sucking the flesh from its tiny bones and spitting them back out into the bowl. Nearing the limit of what is edible in the mess she has made, she stops. Swallows. Wipes her chin on soggy bandages, suddenly focused on a different part of what he said.

"Two days…?"

He nods, crunching on a flap of charred skin. "Started to fear you wouldn't wake at all. That  _would_ be my luck."

_Two days_ _…_  Whatever slim gains she made are gone. He could be anywhere. Closing. At once she feels him again. She will never stop feeling him. He is a shadow, tied to her, inescapable. A sensation on her skin, raw and rancid. A ghostly hand about her throat. A hot rush of breath on her neck. She feels him all about her,  _inside_ of her, crawling around, pulling at the strings that make her dance. Is he even a man at all? Or one more demon ignorantly courted, bent on destroying what little of her remains…? She retches and presses her hand to her mouth so that she is not sick.

Dash puts aside his plate and sits up anxiously at the sound. "All right?"

"Can't… Can't breathe" she pants, scratching and clawing at her throat, struggling for breath against the constricting bandages. "Can't…stay here…I can't—"

"Hey!" Scrambling across the floor on his knees, Dash grabs both of her wrists. "Control yourself," he barks, yanking her hands down.

She tries to look anywhere else than at him. She does not want to see the consternate creases in his forehead. Or the flecks of orange in his umber eyes that stare with grim concern. Not the stipple of grey in his dark beard, or streaks of it at his temples. And not the scar there, on the right side, with its livid tendrils that creep down his cheek and disappear up into the uneven hairline. A burn, she thinks, but does not want to wonder about it. She does not want to notice the split in his chapped lower lip, fresh but healing; likely from the dry cold. Or the yellowish blister on his thumb, brand new, from his carelessness in removing the fish from their poles. All this minutia she does not want to see. Details. Things that she could not reasonably invent only make him  _real._  And if he is real, then so is she, and so is all of this. And that is a crushing truth.

It could have all been over.

"You should have left me."

"Why would I do that?" She does not answer. "What are you so afraid of?" he presses.

She glances out of the window at the encroaching night. Patches of blood red sky peek through the gaps in the trees, already black with their own shadows. Scanning the tree line, she sees faces in every errant twist of the doomed light. Eyes, everywhere. Watching. Waiting. And hers are damp again, and her bruised ribs still straining against her useless, shallow breaths. The skin of her neck stings where she raked her ratty fingernails across it.

"Darkness," she whispers.

—oOo—

He finds her, as she knew he would. As he finds her everywhere. Too tall even for the room, he creeps in all hunched over. Spindly arms, dragging on the floor behind him. Scraping like metal, chafing like sand. She lies frozen in mute awe, wanting so hard to scream but too terrified to move. With lurching steps he closes in, this beast of pure blackness, hate and need. Looming, massive over the bed, he drops down upon her with his whole weight. Crushing on her bones. The air rushes out of her, and there is nothing left in this dead place to fill her up but him. One large, clawed hand presses down on her forehead, burning through her with cold heat; raw ice on raw skin. Another long finger peels down her lower lip, scratching the nail across her teeth. It smells of decay, and she feels the rot on her lip, spreading like blood in water; a slow-creeping, wisping stain. It makes her gag, and when she does, he laughs at his victory and begins to force his way inside. One finger, then another, then the next, until his entire rangy hand is in her mouth. In he pushes; all the way down her throat up, to his bony elbow. Pulling and tugging, breaking through her insides. Making room for himself. When he finds the tattered remains of her heart in the tangle, his demon claws hook into the meat and crush around it.

"Mine…"

For the briefest second, his black eyes flash a brilliant, crackling blue.

—oOo—

She starts awake out of that black dream; sleep, gone missing, like an old friend she once had, but cannot recall by name.  _Still alive_. Body quaking. Stomach churning. Head and heart both thumping; the latter beats violent beneath her sweat-slick breast, like an unbroken steed charged to bolt. Curled up tightly in the corner of the bed, she stares at the wall, counting the rings and the knots in the wood to calm herself. It does not work like it should. It is a long time before she is brave enough to move at all. She stifles her quicken breaths beneath the blanket, as frightened as a child might be at alerting monsters to her presence. It's foolish, she knows that. The monsters will always find her.  _Especially_  if she stays still.

Eventually, her heart does calm, and the stain of fear recedes, but only as far as any regular tide is able. The tug of sleep is strong, but she is not ready to return to that damned place yet. Not without protection. She reaches inside her shirt, forcing two fingers under the snug bandages and feeling for the edges of his letter.  _No_ _…_  She bolts up in dismay, feeling across the mattress, under the pillow, in the folds of blanket, on the floor beside the bed. Suddenly she is bare and breathless. Gasping and lost. All the words she thought she knew by heart, and not a one comes to her now.

"All right?"

She shoots a surprised look up, forgetting for a moment that she is not alone. Dash sits at the table, chair propped on two legs as he leans back against the wall. Right foot crossed over left knee. Cracked heel exposed through a hole in the bottom of his sock. A book rests in his lap. He is about halfway through it. Details. Crushing.

"Where are my things?"

"What things?" He licks a finger to turn the page, appraising her sidelong. "Besides boots, you are wearing all you had."

It is a gut-punch, and precisely what she feared. Lost to the river, or even before. Lost, along with her memory of it. The last thing he ever gave her, lost, like him. She collapses back to the mattress.

"Might be I missed something. I'll take you, when you're up to it," he offers. But is it an offer? Too firm. A promise. One she did not ask for. One she does not answer, but instead retreats from under the blanket, adding one more to the tally of apparent kindnesses yet to reveal their cost.

Safely tucked away, face concealed behind a veil of her hair, she stares at the window over his shoulder. A portal into a night so complete that she can make out nothing beyond. No mountains, no trees, no sky, nor anything that might be lurking. This place feels so remote as to exist in a different world entirely from the one 'sad' one she came from.

Perhaps that is the point.

She draws her attention back to the man, and his reflection in the glass. One bed, one chair, one bowl, one plate. One lost fork. One insular life, removed and self-contained inside a world of his own construction. Sitting without a care amid his lonely kingdom, seemingly unaffected. But looks deceive. There is more to him, she knows it. Yet, she finds herself trapped inside this world of his, with—as he so cavalierly pointed out—little choice but trust him.

And that is as fraught with danger as any demon that might find her in her dreams.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still alive! I wish I could say my absence has been wildly productive, that I was head-down-ass-up in NaNoWriMo or something equally exciting, but, well, I'll level with you. Basically, Fallout (and to a lesser extent, Jessica Jones) happened, and a whole bunch of things fell off a whole bunch of wagons. Suddenly instead of obsessing about about strapping blonde Templar dreamboats, I was obsessed with trying to build dreamboats out of irradiated scrap metal. It's harder than you might expect when you're a chem-addicted, alcoholic, woman-out-of-time, housewife-cum-raider slayer dealing with a whole mess of ugly, two-hundred-year-old baggage. She even has a blog. How the Hell did that happen?
> 
> So, there's been a lot of personal shame and guilt at my neglect of this, which only compounded my more general issues of never really knowing WTF I'm doing. I tried about eighty-four different tacks before I settled on this route, but the fact is that my poor Hawke is a hot mess and hard work. But I'm tryin' to make it right, Em. I'm tryin'.
> 
> Here's hoping all your holidays, whatever they may be, have been and continue to be fruitful/happy/not wrought with crushing agony! I'll try not to make it so long between drinks next time. Cheers! xx


	33. Recovering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That feel when everything is just way the Hell too hard.
> 
> Hello to anyone left out there still following this. I am not dead. Just really bad at things.

 

* * *

 

_Don't look back; you hear me? Don't you_ _**ever** _ _look back…_  


They came in the night; ten or twelve of them. Might as well have been an army. They burned the forest behind them to cut off escape. The summer had been unseasonably dry, and the parched trees drank up the flame with vigour of rain. It shot into the heavens and set the canopy alight, showering embers upon itself in a terrible cycle of renewal and ruin. The knights advanced, thrusting their swords indiscriminately through anything that emerged from the tents. The old. The weary. The children. The innocent. No questions. No pause. A walking fortress of blackened steel, driven forth by blackened hearts, casting their shadows of devastation across the earth.

Anders was already gone when the first screams woke her. She staggered from the tent into a wall of searing, choking heat. Blinded by fear, fatigue; barely able to comprehend what was happening. She was spotted almost at once. The knight turned, eyes glistening through the slit in his helmet; a hard, red reflection of the disorder he had helped sew. Focused and unforgiving. Kicking the flagging body of the old merchant off the end of his blade, he started in after her. The air bristled in a peculiar way as he approached like the sky itself falling down upon her; like she was candle and he was breath, snuffing her out. She could not make her legs work. Her knees buckled, and a great black hand of smoke reached down inside her, squeezing the clean air out.

A terrible scream rung out then. Two distinct voices howling from a single mouth. Anders threw himself between her and the advancing templar, and with that awful roar, slammed the blade of his staff into the ground. The forest trembled with his untamed power. The earth split and snaked out before him in yawning clefts that stole the knight's footing. He fell wholly into a crevasse almost six feet deep, and the weight of all his steel held down his efforts to climb the sheer dirt walls. Another abominable yell ripped apart the blistering night as Anders pushed his hands together, and the earth echoed his command. Groaning and shuddering, it swallowed up the panic-stricken knight, until all that remained of him were the crushed wings of his helmet, jutting from the fused earth.

She watched on in mute horror, until Anders turned and grabbed her by the arm. Hauling her roughly to her feet, he sprinted off, dragging behind him. Her feet barely touched the ground, she was so tired… The caravan was the first stop they had made for days, and only at her insistence. Now, their innocent blood thickened on her hands, and she was running again. Running _still._ It seemed the only thing she knew how to do anymore.

When there was a mile or more of darkness between them and the flames, Anders finally slowed. She shook herself free of his grip and rubbed at her aching shoulder, near ripped from its joint; there would be hefty bruising by morning. Doubled over, she fell against the trunk of an old pine, huffing frantically for breath.

"You need to keep going," he said, not even looking at her, so bent was he on what lay behind them. His heavy breaths were not from the run likes hers, but the rage roiling inside of him. "Head for the river. I'll meet you on the other side."

She laboured upright, swallowing hard the taste of metal. "Anders, no. Let's just keep—"

" _Fool girl,"_ he snapped. The other voice, cutting through; the way glass sounds, scratching on itself. Anders still had enough control to finally look at her, and winced with apology. "They won't stop, Em. You know that." Cupping her face, he stroked her sweating cheek with his thumb. "Please. You are all that matters now."

His fingers smelled of sulphur. She grimaced, and turned her head away.

It was different in the beginning. He tried. He said he wanted to make something out of the chaos he had created. He wanted to collect all the broken pieces and arrange them into something better. But nothing fit the way he wanted. The edges did not match, and the materials were far too disparate. His only mortar was a dream that weeks of sleepless nights had since divorced him of. The more he saw of the monster he had created, the more he resented it. Nothing was turning out like he expected. And he felt the noose closing, and it terrified him. All that mattered to him anymore was survival; hers and his. Not the cause, not the lives he left ruined in his wake. Only survival. And he would stop at nothing to ensure it. Even if it meant driving them both to the brink of disaster.

"I won't be far behind, I promise," he assured her. Then he kissed her; a perfunctory, obligatory thing. He was already elsewhere, and his body, nothing more than a complex clockwork of flesh and bone moving through familiar motions. When he pulled away, lightning forked through his amber eyes, warning her of the impending storm. "Remember: whatever happens—whatever you _hear—_ "

"—don't look back," she recited numbly. Three voices in perfect unison.

He headed off; back in the direction they had come. Skin, splitting apart. Fragile as the earth. Blue fissures of flame jetting from the cracks in his humanity. Longer than she should have, she lingered, hunched in a tight ball against the foot of the tree. Counting out her precious breaths to calm herself. To steel herself. Out of the silence, closer than she liked, the screaming began anew. Not the frightened cries of children calling for their mothers. The bass, curdling wails of men, crying out for their Maker, as the delicate bonds between soul and body were forcibly severed. Sounds no human should ever make. Sound no human _could._

She picked up and she ran. Faster than she thought herself capable of. Never looking back, just as he always told her.

And as she ran, she pretended not to notice the glimmer of hope that maybe _—_ just _maybe—_ this time, neither would he.

 

\--oOo--

 

_There once was a girl from Lothering…_  


The sun is almost down, and Dash is back. Sitting at the table, slicing vegetables. Maker-knows-where he procured them from. Some white, root-looking thing. It joins carrots and leeks, already chopped into the pain.

"Dinner's not far off," he says, noticing her rousing.

Gingerly, she sits up, swings her legs to the floor. All morning, while he was out, she poured herself into the wound at her back. Every ounce of magic she could muster. So much harder than she remembered, without the lyrium. Exhausting. She hadn't realised what a crutch it had become.

"Feeling better?"

She is thirsty, and starving. The pain in her lumbar is gone, but her ribs, untouched, are still tender. Her head feels two sizes too small for her brain, and heavy. Like a stone dangling from a stalk of wheat. Full nights of indulgence at the Hanged Man had left her feeling less fragile. But she says none of that, and simply nods. Easier.

Dash gestures to the door. "Basin outside, if you feel like freshening up."

Another nod. She pushes to her feet. Standing is simple, but her muscles still stiff. Makes for a faltering trip outside. Halfway to the latrine around back, she stops to vomit; three times. Night is fast falling. The forest at the edge of the clearing, coming alive with unnerving sounds. Crickets and cicadas sing discordant songs. Shrubs rustle and twigs snap under unseen feet. A wolf far off howls, and is answered soon after by a haunting chorus of like voices. By the time she finally reaches the outhouse, she has quite had her fill of the outside and the dark. She completes her business quick as she can and rushes back, where the light spilling through the windows is a sound relief.

As promised, she finds the basin and washcloth on the bench outside the door. She dips her hands in; freezing. Perfect. The feverish scorch of magic lingers in her flesh. She scoops up a handful and lifts it to her mouth to quench her burning thirst, then goes back for more, splashing it liberally over her face and arms. She lifts her wild mane and ladles two more across the back of her neck, shivering as it trickles down her spine. The evening breeze comes in soft gusts through the pines, chilling her further. It's easy to imagine voices twisting on its frigid tangles. _Emmm…Come… The riiiverrrr…_

_Not real_ , she assures herself. _Leftover dreams._ But just in case, she dries off hastily and retreats inside.

Dash is at the fireplace now. The savoury aroma of vegetables tossing in fat fills the cabin, and it somehow _feels_ warmer for it. Reminds her of mother's cooking. Back in Lothering. Buttered leeks with fresh herbs from the garden. Leg of mutton. Fresh baked bread. Her empty stomach yearns louder than her heart.

She takes four careful steps. The tips of her toes sink into the bristly beast hide. Dash shuffles aside, giving her ample room to sit. She does, watching mutely. It is a surprise relief to see him, and that he is the same as before. Same scar, same hair, same cuts and bruises. Some new ones in the mix. Real and here. She is not alone. It's more a relief to hear a sound greater than her own thoughts, even if only the sizzle of vegetables. She tries to think of something to say. Anything will do, as long as it stops her dogged mind from running back to the graveyard to dig up more old bones.

"Dash," she croaks, hoping more might follow organically. First time she has addressed him by name. Sounds strange to her ear. "Odd name."

He raises an eyebrow. "Says the woman without one." If it is a question, he does not wait for an answer. "Mathieu," he says. Grimacing. Must sound as odd to him. "Mathieu de Chiel. Officially. But no one calls me that these days."

"De Chiel?" she echoes. "You're Orlesian." It comes out like an accusation.

He scowls; not exactly _at_ her. "Ferelden, born and raised. Supposedly my father was. Never met the man, myself. Occupation ended days before I was born, and so did his duties here, it would seem. All of them." Giving the vegetables one final toss, he pulls them from the heat and divides them alongside fish he must have roasted before. "I was a consequence of war no one would bear. Someone, my mother perhaps, left me on the stoop of a Chantry with that name scrawled on a note tucked in the swaddling. And that was that."

His candour catches her off guard. She barely knows what to say. Settles on the expected. "Sorry."

"Water under a bridge long burned," he says, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. Then, reaching for a pinch of his meal, gasps. "Shit, wait."

Dash puts his plate aside, jumps to his feet. Darts to the table in three large steps. A quick rummage through the clutter later, he returns brandishing two spoons in his fist. Freshly whittled. Hundreds of tiny knife cuts. One long, lonely afternoon of toiling. He holds one out to her. As she takes it, she catches her renegade lip curling into an approximation of a smile.

"Anyway," he continues, digging into his meal, "I started just going by 'Dash' early on. Less a mouthful. Fewer questions. Fewer beatings." He shrugs. "Easier."

Poking at the food on her plate as she listens, her brows knit together. When was the last time she last permitted a name of her own choosing? One that was not assigned by someone other than her parents. One that was not a chain around her ankles, or a rope around her neck. One that she could speak without wincing. Without worrying what people might think, or know—or think they knew. And if she was to give herself one now, what name would that even be anymore?

_Who am I?_

"Mallory," she blurts, answering her own silent question.

Then, she quickly shovels a spoonful of vegetables into her mouth, before anything else can fall out after it.

 

\--oOo--

 

_This is where she died._  


Water eddies about the rocks in the shallows at the narrow shore, engaging the weeds in a mesmerising slow dance. This is where she fell. A little over twelve feet from the top of the ridge to the rocks below. How must it have felt? The wild earth spread in cracks and gullies beneath her weary feet. The endless forest pressed down upon her. Darkness, closing at her back. And then suddenly… _nothing._ Was she afraid? She must have been. Fear was the only companion she had left. The only one to mourn her when she passed.

This is where her fragile ribs cracked. Second time in as many days. The last time. This is where her head slammed against the stone and spilled what remained of her senses. Where she lay, growing colder and dimmer. Water soaking her through. Grit in her mouth. River, filling her lungs, one drop at her time. Death's icy fist, closing around her throat. This is where she lost the last thing she had left to lose. Where she gave up. Where at long last, she stopped running.

This is where the Champion of Kirkwall died.

"Mallory."

A few yards further downstream, the riverbed slides steeply away. Hard to hear over the sound of the water rushing over the drop. "Hm?"

Dash steps forward to join her at the water's edge. "I asked if you see anything."

"Oh." She tugs the collar of his coat up under her chin. Far too big, but he insisted. Even wrapped as tight as she can around her small frame, the heat escapes out the neck and down the sleeves. She balls the cuffs up in her fists and stuffs them under her armpits to contain it. "No." And never expected she would. Even if the letter survived this far, it is long gone now. It and he and _she;_ all gone together.

She thought she would be sadder.

"Should get you back, then," he says, glancing at the sky. "Don't like the look of that cloud, and I need to check my snares yet."

"I'll come with you."

"No. Few miles round trip. You're not—"

"Please." She should go back, work on her ribs. But confinement is driving her mad. Rest, making her restless. "I'd rather not be alone."

Skeptical, Dash rubs at his beard, silently deliberating. There is a look in his dusky eyes that reminds her of that first afternoon. The composed urgency with which he decided how best to disarm her. This is a weapon he seems less equipped to turn aside. He relents with a sigh, nods over his shoulder and sets off without further protest.

It feels good to be out. Out of the cabin. Out of her head. Out in the light. Things are a little less hazy today. Dash sets a steady clip, but is able to keep within two or three pace of him easily. It is clear how he owns these woods, guiding her with quite confidence down invisible trails, trod by his boots alone. Following a map of his design, existing only in his memory. Habit forces her to count her steps, but after a few hundred, the pointlessness of the task overwhelms her. All notions of time and distance are rendered moot but the scale of the forest. Everything looks the same to her.

"How far are we?"

"From?"

"Anything."

Dash gives a breathy laugh. "Highway is that way," he says, pointing vaguely to his left, "about eight miles."

Only eight. Surprising. A good distance for her to come, especially injured. Just seems like it should be so much further away. Almost another country. Then he confirms what she already suspected: there is little else this side of the lake. The terrain is bad, the weather worse. Even in the summer, the storms that roll off the Frostbacks can be brutal. And apparently people find the view of the tower on the lake 'unsettling'—Dash scoffs at that. The combination keeps people away. Though evidently not all people.

"There _is_ an inn," he continues, "fifteen miles down the road. The Stout Oak? You must have passed it if you came from the south." She shrugs. "Closest thing to civilisation you'll find; if you can call any of the louts that frequent the joint 'civilised'. Merchants, mostly. Dwarves, a lot of them. Rowdy bunch. First of the month, I make the trek, for trade. And information." Dash throws a grave look over his shoulder. "Exile may be the smartest decision I ever made."

Hard to argue.

The temperature drops the deeper they go. Silvery mist creeps down over the forest, and her laboured breaths rise in ghostly gasps from her smarting lungs. The obstinate complaining of her heels is a reminder of the too-many miles she has put into these flimsy boots. It travels up her shins with every step on this uneven ground. Now, a cramp is starting on her right side to match the ache on the left. She presses on for a time. Hopes it will pass. It doesn't, but gets worse. Three paces stretch to four, to five, to seven. Every third step she must throw in a skip to maintain a respectable closeness. Exhausting.

When Dash realises how poorly she is travelling, he pulls up to wait. "I told you," he says when she catches up. Almost insufferably smug.

"I'm fine," she pants, trying to mask her thanks for a moment's rest.

"So I see. Here; take these." He holds out the pair of rabbits he has collected so far. With a grimace, she does as she is told. Dash turns and drops to a ground. "All right; hop on."

" _What?_ No." She recoils. "I can manage." The wheezing is not so convincing.

"We don't have all day for you to play coy," he snaps. Brusque. Urgent. He points at the cloud and its ominous green hue. "I did not pull you from the river only to lose you to freezing rains." She does not move. Dash sighs. Glancing over his shoulder, he adds, gently, "Trust me."

That word again. So easy for him.

Breathless, she looks around. The monotony is overwhelming. Shadows upon shadows in an ocean of green and brown and grey. There is no clear or easy way back from here. And she does not want to be lost. Not again. She is running out of lives to lose.

Eyes jammed shut, stomach in nervous knots, she steps forward. Timidly dangles her arms over Dash's shoulders. True to form, he shows no such reservation, firmly clamping his hands around the backs of her knees. She gasps, body going as rigid as the strangled bunnies in her fist. There is a further rush of panic when he dips forward to stand. When her feet lose contact with solid ground, a whimper escapes her, and her arms flex around his neck.

"All right?"

"You will not have to do this again," she promises in an uneven whisper. More for herself than for him.

Dash half-shrugs, taking a moment to adjust her meagre weight. "No trouble."

Apparently. He is barely impeded by the burden. If anything, he moves faster now that he does not have to keep track of her. Even hurdles over logs and clefts in the terrain. She _hates_ it _._ An involuntarily squeal escapes her with each leap. It makes him laugh; certainly, he is doing it on purpose. It is some time before she is brave enough to keep her eyes open. The sight of the ground passing beneath her dangling feet prompts an old memory to pop, unsolicited, out of her mouth.

"My brother used to carry me like this. We would walk to town when we were bored. Or when Mother needed something. On the way home, I'd jump up on his shoulders. We had a rule. If he could not throw me off before I counted to sixty, he had to carry me the rest of the way." She bites her lip to stifle a laugh. "Once, he slammed his head back into my face. _Claimed_ it was an accident. I didn't know a nose could bleed so much. I thought I might die. Carver thought it was hilarious. Joke was on him. I held on. Bled _all_ over him. Mother screamed at us both when we got home."

"Sounds like a bit of an arse," Dash chuckles.

"He was." Then, barely more than a whisper, "I miss him every day."

He tilts his head to catch her in his periphery. The scarred flesh around his eye creases with a fleeting smile. "I'm sorry."

"Me too."

They don't speak for the rest of the meandering hike, but each step is a little more comfortable than the last. They settle into a routine. At the next four stops, he sets her down to check the snare. Any bounty he collects, she carries. It is a small thing, but makes her feel useful. Less a burden. By the last, she is feeling lighter. Breathing easier. Likely, she could make it the rest of the way on her own. She does not try. Instead, when she hops onto his shoulders for the last leg home, she silently counts to sixty.

Rules are rules.  


\--oOo--

 

_Is this what it feels like to let go?_  


The weather set in by early afternoon. No mere rain, but a tempest of hard, driving sleet, and a bitter gale ripping down along the river's path. Hours later, it carries on, battering the groaning walls of the cabin. Rattling the window shutters like some relentless predator, clamouring for a way inside. Only a scant draft makes it through the cracks. Insufferable. Kind of chill that thickens the air and leaves a dewy sheen on everything; that settles damply on the skin and seeps down to the shivering bones. Between the cold and the dreadful racket, sleep eludes her. Finally, able to stand it no longer, she gets up. Pulling the blanket around her and stuffing the pillow under her arm, she makes her way on tiptoes to the rug. There, she beds down on her unbruised side in the ample space left between Dash and the hearth. The heat pouring off the smouldering coals is an immediate relief.

A couple of feet away, Dash sleeps, heavy and hard; chest rising and falling deeply with his slow breaths. He wears a consternate scowl, as if it is only stubborn will that keeps him that way. He looks different, sleeping. Younger, without the heavy squint lines around his eyes. Vulnerable. Intimate.

They whiled away the dreary afternoon playing card games in front of the fire—Old Maid, Fish; safe, simple, low stakes. Between them, they finished off a flagon of wine, quaffed straight from the bottle. By dinner, they were bantering as frivolously as a pair of old friends with nothing important left to say. She is no closer to knowing anything much about him—he's from Denerim, she thinks, or possibly Amaranthine; might have served in the army once—and she remained as circumspect. Just a couple of broad stroke paintings, without any of the finer details that would make either of them distinguishable, or real. Somehow it still feels like the most honest conversation she has had with anyone for a long time.

Just as hers are finally growing heavy, Dash's eyes snap open. Sharp and clear. Instantly focused, like he was never sleeping at all. She nearly yelps.

"What are you doing here?"

"Couldn't sleep," she sputters with a jittery exhale. "Cold, under the window."

The excuse seems to satisfy. "Damned storm," he grumbles, barely stifling a yawn. "Need to fix those shutters."

She loved nights like this once. When they were young, Mother would bundle them all up in front of the stove. Father would tell stories until they fell asleep. She and Carver were always in competition to stay awake longest; he usually won. Later on, she still used the rain as an excuse to forestall responsibility and huddle up in bed with the hound and a book. Nowadays, all rain means to her is pruned fingers, waterlogged feet, painful chafing. No warm stoves or cosy beds; only hollowed out trees, or rocky outcroppings. Filthy barns, ripe with wet animal stink. Even that cave, on the way into hateful Antiva, does not seem so appealing to her now. Not compared with walls and a roof, dry clothes and a hearty meal to fill her belly. There are far worse places she could have ended up than here. And with far worse company. Dash is easy, in a way she had forgotten people could even be. Uncomplicated, but not simple. Undramatic, but not tiresome. Fresh air after years of breathing smoke. No expectations, no preconceptions. She can be herself—or her best impression of it. The way she used to be. Before the Champion. Back when life was simple, but not uncomplicated, and she still had a firm idea of who she was. But she's getting there. Sometimes it takes a stranger to point out the familiar.

"Do you ever get lonely out here?" she asks after a time.

Dash rolls onto his back, yawning proper this time, and folds his arms behind his head. "Being on my own is the point," he replies dryly.

"Hm. I used to think it was the worst thing that could happen to me."

He looks over the crook of his elbow at her. "Not anymore?"

_I would have been better off alone._ It's not a thing she can admit out loud yet. Hurts even to think it. There is beauty and danger in any storm. Excitement and wonder as it builds. Terror and exhilaration as it rages. Heartbreak and relief when it passes. Theirs raged on too long. Only now, with clearer head and drier eyes can she see the full extent of the devastation left in its wake. It's impossible not think what might have been. To wish that she had taken cover the moment she saw the lightning, and let the tempest roll her by. Now, like the time she broke her finger so severely that the bone punched through her skin, what she foremost remembers when she looks upon her life with Anders is the pain. And like the finger that does not bend quite the way it did before, he has left his mark all over her in hidden scars that no magic will ever heal.

How is it possible to love someone so dearly that a life without them seems unfathomable, and at the same time _hate_ them with your whole heart for the mess they made of that same life?

Slipping her hands beneath her pillow, she hums a soft sigh. "Wisdom always seems to come too late."

"You're not dead," Dash mumbles. "Not too late."

"I suppose." At some point, she stopped giving any thought to the future. Or even hoping that she might have one.

To that end…where is the darkness? It's been days. He should have been here by now. He's always been right there at her back. Scorching the earth. Cutting off escape. Driving her toward destruction. Now she has crossed the edge and survived the fall after, but he is not here. And every second he does not come, she dares to hope he never will. Every second he does not come, it's easier not to think of him at all. The fear is still there, itching inside of her. But like a scab, all she need do is simply resist the urge to scratch.

"Do you think things happen for a reason?" Tiredness is making her tongue lazy, and her words slur together.

"Choices aren't reason enough?" he asks, a hint of mockery in his tone.

"Not everything is choice," she argues. "I didn't choose where to fall. Hundred yards further south, I would be dead." So close. So close to spending eternity here. Never seen or heard from again. A nameless husk, withering on the frozen ground. Three days on, death does not seem nearly the victory it had on waking. "A friend and I used to joke how we always seemed to be in the wrong place at the right time." Her voice cracks. Guilt seizes her. No spare thought for Varric all this time. He is likely worried sick over what's become of her. A thing she wonders herself. "Not sure if there is such a thing anymore."

"As right times?"

"Wrong places."

Dash takes a long, contemplative breath. "So…you think I was destined to find you?" No teasing this time. A smile. Thin-lipped. Warm, but guarded. It makes her skin prickle.

"I should be dead. A hundred times over. Somehow I keep going. I have a lot of…loose ends," she says delicately. "Maybe that's why. I need to take care of them."

That prickly smile wanes, and Dash rolls back onto his side to face her. "Is that what all this brooding is about, then? Goodbye?"

"I suppose it is." He appears almost stricken for a moment, and she frowns. "I figured you would be relieved."

"I don't think you well enough yet. Besides, it…hasn't been terrible, having you about."

"High praise," she teases.

Dash laughs. There's a self-conscious quality about it that is actually somewhat charming. Unguarded. "I only mean… I would be doing all the same things anyway. But it's…better, doing them for someone else. Feels more important. I suppose I… I suppose I didn't realise how much I have been—" Struggling with his thoughts, his mirth evaporates and his features draw grave as he finishes, "—lacking a purpose."

She offers a sympathetic smile. "Then you understand why I can't stay."

"One more day," Dash urges. "To rest up, and for the weather to clear. If your mind is still made, I'll take you out to the road, no questions."

Guilt again. First, for not owning her duty when she should have. Then, for how she wishes she could throw it away entirely. The Champion of Kirkwall is dead; let the Inquisition clean up her mess. Mallory could disappear. Never seen, never heard from again, in these dark and not-so-lonely woods.

"One more day," she promises.

To herself, as much as to him.

 

\--oOo--

 

_They cannot cage you, Little Bird…_  


When her magic manifested, one of the first things Father did was bring her north. She knew that it must be important; he would never leave Mother alone otherwise. They stayed in Wutherford, on the eastern shore of the lake, and that night, they went down to the fishing docks, where they sat and talked. What stuck out most was how brutally dark it was. The sky and the water were the same shade of black. The only relief—if it could be considered such—was a near-full moon, suspended in the sky over the tower. Even from several miles away, it loomed enormous. Hundreds of feet of sheer white marble jutting like a stripped quill out of the ink. The moonlight shining off the walls made the air around it shimmer like a mirage, or a poorly drawn reflection in a cloudy mirror. It appeared other-worldly, unbelonging to either man or nature.

"That is where they will take you," Father said, sterner than she had ever seen him. "You will never see your family again. You may never know the taste of fresh air. I was lucky in ways most can never hope to be. You must be careful, always, Little Bird. Be kind and be _cautious_. Freedom is yours to lose. _They_ cannot cage you;you can only cage yourself."

It sits empty now, but the sight of the spire piercing through the pink morning mist is as unnerving as it was back then. She may never have been a prisoner inside its walls, but she has ever been its hostage. Carver used to resent her for her magic. He could not begin to know how she envied him his freedom to simply _be._ He never had to lie to every person he ever met or go to sleep nervous of what might find him in his dreams. He never had to be afraid to feel too strongly, lest it attract unwanted attention on either side of the Veil. And every morning when he awoke, it never crossed his mind that _this_ might be the day that his luck finally ran out.

Fear is as good as any lock and key. But it is one that only she can free herself from.

"All right?"

"Yes," she replies with a determined nod, and turns her back on the unsightly view.

Sighing, Dash ducks his head under the strap of the pack he carried out and extends it to her. "Here. I'm sorry it's not much."

"Are you joking? This is the _world,_ " she says, incredulous, as she slings the pack over her shoulder. Dry meat rations enough to last a week, if she is prudent—hopefully she will not need that long; two skins of fresh water; more oddly, a pair of socks—never worn, he assured her; and lastly, the very knife she threatened him with days ago. All this in addition to the rabbit furs he bound with cords around her shins and arms for warmth. Inelegant, but more than she could have hoped for. "Thank you, Dash. For everything. You've—" Helpless, she shakes her head. "I'm sorry I doubted you."

"I think I did very little." He smiles briefly, then clears his throat and nods toward the road. "You should get moving. Wasting light here."

As she turns to face the east, the sight of the road stretching out before her again sets her heart is racing. Every home she has ever had, she has fled in ruin. Every place she has ever been, she has come to running, only to leave it the same way. And every time she has known, in her heart and in her head, that she would never see that place again. It is the same way now, except that she is no longer running away. With a brave breath, she takes her first step on one more uncertain journey. Then another, and another, and another; each one bringing her profoundly closer to sickness and to buckling. The instinct to flee is still there, scratching at her heels, and after only twenty steps, she stalls.

Then she does the one thing she was never supposed to. She turns, and she looks back.

He is still there at the side of the road. Arms folded. Expression stony. Watching her go.

"Dash," she calls back. No longer sounds so strange to her. "When this is over…when I'm done… Maybe I'll see you at the Oak sometime. I owe you a drink or two."

She cannot quite see his smile from here, but she can feel it. He slowly nods. "First of every month," he yells.

With one last wave, she turns and sets off again. Part of her suspects that it will never come to be. But that part is quieter than the rest that dares to hope, and that's enough. It only takes a sliver of light to keep darkness from closing completely. Something as simple as a promise to stranger. Something to look forward to.

Something to count on.


	34. Uniting

Olivia was tired _._

Tired of the hot ache of battle throbbing through her fingers and forearms and deep in her over-drawn shoulder. Tired of ceaseless bloodshed, needless and needful. Tired of life or death, kill or be killed. Tired of the craggy peaks of skin at the edges of the calluses she had picked raw from stress. Tired of the tedious pounding behind her eyes, sagging from long nights of fractured rest. Tired of the stench and the sorrow; the dread and the nothingness. More than any of that, she was tired of missing Cullen so profoundly she could not even take a full breath for the smothering loneliness that had made its bed inside her chest.

She was tired of Crestwood.

The place was a graveyard. All that lived here were scavengers, picking over the sodden bones of a land withered years ago. Sadness hung like a blinding fog that permeated everything and everyone it touched, turning it ashen and bleak. Like the wet, dead fetor that had wormed its way into the fibres of her leathers, she could not seem to scrub herself of melancholy, but dragged it around like a sack of stones on her back; a useless weight, wearing her down, from which she could not find a moment’s relief. Ordinary tasks, such as closing a rift, took far longer than they ought in her torpor, and were that much more fraught with danger. There had been many close calls. New scars for her body and her memories.

The last two days, slogging through the web of dank caves and misery beneath the drained lake, were the worst of a trip that had been on a steady decline from the moment she left Skyhold. If the surface was a graveyard, then Old Crestwood was the grave proper, stuffed with interred secrets and the skeletons of other men’s regrets. The unspeakable things they found buried in that cold, damp blackness were best left that way—buried, and unspoken. Olivia could only pray that she did not end up the same. Though no stranger to close quarters, there was an ocean of difference between a small room that she could leave at will, and a sprawling labyrinth of uncharted caverns that could collapse at any moment, entombing her forever. Assuming she did not become lost first; trip and break a leg; suffocate; becoming wedged in some too-tight crevasse; or fall into a hidden pit. To say nothing of the more _obvious_ threats of demons and risen dead, and the stealthy subterranean critters with all their tiny legs, crawling about in her hair when she tried to sleep. Crestwood’s stale air never tasted so sweet, nor the sun so radiant or the sky as beautifully blue as when they finally made it back to the surface.

Now, with the sun setting on day fifteen and back in the relative safety of the reclaimed Caer, she was alone by choice. The others were downstairs, gathered around the fire; no doubt well into the keg she spotted soldiers hauling up the hill earlier. With her mood hardly conducive to revelry, she shut herself away in the confines of her cramped, makeshift office, drinking from a more modest bottle all her own and sifting with tepid interest through the stack of papers that had piled up in the days she was afield. It seemed to be nothing but reports from the scouts out searching the hills for sight or sign of the solitary Warden. She afforded each page only a cursory scan before balling it up and hurling it blindly in the direction of the brazier. None of it mattered anymore.

She did not mean to be sour. The Champion’s return was a welcome stroke of good fortune, and worth celebrating. It was also a pointed reminder of the venomous falling out she had with Varric more than a week ago over her decision to call off the search. They argued for hours, going around in increasingly vicious circles until they were both embittered and hoarse, and culminated in a frosty parting of ways—Olivia, Dorian and Cassandra riding on for Crestwood, and Varric remaining at the northern outpost to continue the hunt for his missing friend. They did not leave him; they _abandoned_ him. That was the word he used; jabbed her with it like some rusty old shiv. The Inquisitor had a _responsibility_ , and she _abandoned_ it.

Every day since, the accusation gnawed at her. _Had_ she done the right thing? Had she done _enough_? _Was_ she abandoning him and the Champion both? Was she _responsible_? Even if she was, was guilt a good enough reason to ignore more pressing responsibilities in favour of pursing a mage who, as far as she knew, might be dead? Or at the very least, well adept at avoiding pursuers? It seemed Olivia’s whole life of late was that: one laborious search after the next, chasing rabbits through the brambles until she was scratched up, tired and broken, never knowing if the path would lead her anywhere but ruin.

The practical part of her was secure in her decision, but that hardly mattered. With her confidence still as cut to ribbons as the meat of her cheek, that part was drowned out by the howling of her many doubts. Finding the two of them at the Caer, waiting, when she returned from the depths was not the relief it should have been but a validation of every cutting word and hounding question. She _should_ have done more. She should have _waited_. If she had not been so selfishly impatient to move on, the rest of the trip would have been less of a trial. She would have had an extra pair of hands instead of one less. They would have been done sooner and safer; maybe even on their way home already.

So now, she drank, and she stewed. With each irrelevant document she laid hands on, her frustration and her intemperance mounted. What her agitated throws gained in force, they lost in accuracy. Soon, all she had accomplished was a mess; a fiery island floating in a sea of wadded paper flotsam. Then, mixed with items dating back at least three or four days, she came upon a dazzling jewel hidden among the endless dross. She plucked it up immediately and shoved everything else aside.

As she held the letter up before her, brushing her thumb over the dusky ink of her address, she bit down on a burgeoning smile. His q’s were peculiar, with lazy little loops in the tails that gave the impression of g’s. Pressing the letter to her lips, she breathed it in deeply—her first satisfying breath in days—and the smile broke all restraint. Maybe it was the wine rushing to her head all at once. Maybe it was the heady scents of wax and charcoal, and the lingering trace of his mahogany desk drawers. Maybe it was the thought of his hands, rugged and sure, sliding over the parchment to make his careful folds. Maybe it was the thought of his hands, rugged and unsure, sliding over the bare skin of her back...

Olivia inhaled sharply at the last, shaking the images out as quickly as they entered her head; no good could come of such torment. With a wistful sigh, slipped a finger beneath the blood red seal and heedlessly unfolded the pages to read.  
  


 

_Inquisitor,_

_I read over your preliminary report. I wish I could say that I was surprised to hear of the proliferation of obstacles you have encountered. Still, it could be far worse. The loss of the Champion, while unfortunate, is not unsurmountable with our resources. You made the right decision—and if Varric cannot see that, perhaps he should reconsider his position here altogether. As for Crestwood itself… I know how frustrated you must be. Take heart; you have endured far greater challenges than this. That said, I will organise additional reinforcements to assist in holding the village and the Caer, both. Two dozen or so should be sufficient to free your hand considerably. I will mobilise them at dawn. ~~Maker willing, you~~ Never mind._

_In your absence, I have turned my near full attention back to the hunt for Samson and his growing army, though I scarcely know where to begin. To that end, I have been scouring every relevant report I can lay hand on—from confirmed attacks and sightings through to even the most spurious of rumour—and marked it all on a map, hoping some pattern might emerge. A peculiar convergence, some obvious trail of troop movements…something. Anything. So far, all I seem to have to show for my efforts is a week-long headache and a rash covering half of southern Thedas, but no clear source of infection. _

_I don’t know… Maybe I am too close to this to be objective at all. Briefly, I considered consulting Leliana, but she regards me oddly of late, and Josephine has her hands full enough. There is no one else here I am comfortable bringing in on this, for now. It could be that I am afraid they will only confirm what I most fear—that it is a waste, or I am going mad. Would that you were here. Perhaps you might see sense in it where I cannot. ~~Would that you were here for rea~~ I am waiting to hear from some scouts in the Dales, chasing a possible lead. Maker, let them find me something._

_Reluctant as I am even to broach the subject, you should know that I am also in the process of finalising transfer arrangements for the prisoner. The surgeon assures me he will be ready to move as early as the day after next. It cannot come soon enough. Obviously, I have had no contact with him ~~(not to say I have not consi~~  yet he still manages to be a drain on my dwindling patience. Every day I must endure some new complaint from the guards or the healers regarding his crass behaviour. I will not burden you with the litany of his offences; suffice it to say, chains are no barrier to his ability to make people ‘uncomfortable’. ~~A muzzle, perhaps~~ Mercifully, the most common grievance is also the most benign—his incessant whining about the ‘smell’. I have some thoughts on that, but will spare you more of my rambling (for now)._

_I have resolved a route through the port of Jader to Cumberland and across the Vale from there. It is indirect, but offers some advantages. For one, it avoids the oft-treacherous Vimmarks; the journey is long enough without the added danger to our men. More importantly, it avoids you. I promised that he would not come near you again, and meant it. Not even so much as to cross your path on the road. Maker willing, he will be gone by the time this reaches you. Pray, do not spare him another thought. He is not worthy._

_Otherwise, things here are as ever. A new batch of recruits arrived. Dubious lot; most at least as old as I, some older, and a pair of brothers barely out of their teens. I have been running them through drills these past two mornings. There are some stand-outs, though they all need work. To be honest, I think I might, as well. I fear I have been chained to this desk too long, and am paying for my neglect with soreness in places I have not felt since my youth, if then. Rest assured, I am being careful—which is all the more humbling._

_I suppose that’s all. I could go on, but said I would spare you my rambling, and fear I have already written more than I ought. All else can wait for your return. Insomuch, I continue to pray that the Maker watch over you. May He light your path, and guide you safely and swiftly home._

_Cullen_

_P.S. Elan’s broth is especially vile. Are you sure you left the correct recipe? Maker, preserve me. Should I survive her poisoning attempts, I swear, I shall never break another bone again._   
  
  


 

Olivia slumped back in her chair with a laugh, soft and fleeting. _Maker, hear his prayers_. How she longed to see him; the one person of whom she never seemed to tire. Who always seemed to know precisely what she needed without needing to be asked—even from hundreds of miles away. Who, without any effort, could make her smile at a time she least wanted to. Hearing from him was an edged blessing. Having something real and tangible to hold onto gave her a reprieve from the weight of the gloom, but the time and distance and disconnect between them was never so pronounced as when she could see it, spelled out in bold, black ink upon his pages.

She read the letter over twice more, studying every word, stroke and errant drop of ink. He was not usually one for such lengthy correspondence. Any message she had received from him before was a brief affair; a handful of carefully chosen words, never more or less than what he needed. Here, he seemed to struggle with economy, and yet ironically, it was the things that did not make it to the page that spoke the loudest.

As she started in for a fourth torturous pass, she was startled by a curt rapping on the chamber door. Hastily folding the pages up, she tucked them clear away inside the pocket of her coat and gave her face a quick rub with both hands; readjusting her mask.

“What is it?” she snapped.

Hinges gone neglected for years groaned shrilly as the door pushed inward. It made her skin crawl and her fingers clench around the arms of her chair. Little things set her off at times; largely innocuous things that would not usually have bothered her. The rattle of soldiers’ armour in the night time stillness. A sudden laugh when it was quiet. An odd pang in her fingertips, under the nails. The ephemeral taste of rust on her tongue, or whiff of it in her nose. The scream of hinges. It was frustrating, and outside her control. She did not want to think on, remember or validate what had happened. It was always just there, lurking, like a shadow on all her thoughts, and it grew taller and darker as the sun set each day.

Pushing one of her shallow breaths out through pursed lips, she committed herself to the present, and the figure loitering half-in the crack of a doorway. The face, she barely recognised, but the hair she knew at once. A long bramble of curls, slung in a loose tie over one shoulder; the same rich copper as the marigolds that used to grow in the Chantry garden through the summer months.

“Champion,” she gasped, rising to her feet in sobering alarm.

The woman winced as if Olivia had struck her across the face. “Mallory. Please,” she said; surely but softly spoken. “Am I interrupting?”

“No. I was just—” She cast a sly glance toward the brazier right of the door, and the litter scattered around it. “—reading some mail.” Mallory had obviously noticed and smiled, a little stiffly. A self-conscious blush swept Olivia’s cheeks, and she returned one equally strained.

“I hoped we could talk,” she said. “May I come in?”

“Not at all.”

“Ah.” Her expression dropped. “Apologies, then.” With a polite nod, she turned at once to leave.

“Shit, wait—!” Olivia called, rubbing at her tired brow after realising her misspeak. When the woman’s head reappeared around the door, she clarified, “I don’t _mind,_ is what I meant. Sorry. Yes, of course. We should talk. Come in. Sit, if you like.” She gestured to the second chair across from her. “Whatever you prefer.”

Mallory slid the rest of the way inside, letting the door lurch closed behind her, and Olivia masked her dismay both at the sound and at how extremely small the room suddenly felt. How close the walls, how low the ceiling, how narrow the windows, how stifling the air. How fast her pulse. This was a moment she had been dreading, even actively avoiding. Here they were at last; the Inquisitor, the Champion, and the shadow that covered them both, trapped together in this tight little space. No escaping it. It was enough to drive a person to—

“Drink?” she asked as the Champion settled into the chair. She offered up the near-empty bottle, confessing, “I…don’t have a cup.”

Mallory shook her head. Before putting it aside, Olivia took a swig to rid her mouth of that vague rust flavour. In the deathly silence, her gulping swallow was distressingly audible. The two exchanged another pair of tense smiles, and she wiped the damp corners of her mouth, daintily as she could, between her thumb and forefinger. _So much for noble graces…_ she thought dismally. Resuming her seat at last, she eyed Mallory keenly and waited for her to speak.

Aside from the tell-tale hair, the woman seated across from her shared little with the one she had met weeks ago. This one was calm and composed, though not without a few quirks; the way she stroked absently at the animal furs bound around her wrist, and how her idle lips mouthed silent words, too small to read. The hides were new, and Olivia wondered where they came from. They gave her the look of some grizzled survivalist, or simply a _survivor;_ wild and free. The most marked difference, though, was in her eyes, which shone with crisp clarity, seeing _everything;_ likely more than Olivia was even capable. Eager to avoid the scrutiny, she cleared her throat and took it upon herself to break the uncomfortable silence.

“Look, I don’t—”

“I just wan—” the Champion began in the same instant.

They both fell mute again, except for Olivia’s weary sigh.

“Sorry. Go,” Mallory ceded.

“I was going to say—” This time, she faltered all on her own, mind blank. “Honestly, I don’t even know what I was going to say. What can I?” Chewing on her lip, Olivia stared at the bottle under her hand, where _her_ nervous fingers were drawing lines in the stubborn film of dust. “‘Sorry’ is a word I hear myself saying a lot of late. I’ve come to realise how utterly impotent it is. No amount of apologies can ever undo what my br—” The word stuck in her neck like a shard of bone she could neither cough out nor swallow back down. She continued around the lump. “All I can offer is my word—if it is worth anything—that he is gone. Whatever else happens, that man will _never_ come near you again.”

As Cullen’s words tumbled off her tongue, the gravity of them hit like the sky falling on her shoulders. The letter arrived days ago. He must have written it at least one or two prior, depending on the speed of the couriers. By now, Everett would be well on his way to Jader, under guard and chain to face his master’s punishment, whatever it may be. Either way, she would never see him again. It was not a glad feeling, nor an unhappy one. It was barely a feeling at all; only a pressing burden of acknowledgement. She still had not written her father to confess any of it. Another thing she could not avoid indefinitely. Another thing she was no closer to knowing how to do.

“I know. And I appreciate it,” Mallory replied, but her features drew grave as she sat forward. “But you needn’t apologise. For him, or to me. You’ve done me no wrong.”

At last Olivia coughed out the wedge in her throat, in the form of an acerbic laugh. “Are you sure? I mean, didn’t Varric tell you?”

“That’s…why I came—because he wouldn’t. He would rather pretend nothing happened than confront it even to make amends.” She sat back again. “Varric is more dwarf than he likes to admit. Stubborn and hot-headed, I mean. And fiercely protective, almost to a fault, over the ones he loves—as I’m sure you well know.”

Mallory offered a smile so gracious that Olivia could but only feel shame for her enduring bitterness, and looked away to escape it.

“You aren’t the one he’s angry with,” she continued. “I know how he blames himself for…well, _me_. But he ignores the fact that I made my choices. Some simple; most not. Messy ones I regret, but most I don’t. Even those I do, I’m not sure I would change. Different is not always better. And I can’t, anyway; any more than you can undo the actions of another.” Mallory shrugged. “I think Varric struggles with that. He wants to control the story, but forgets this isn’t that. It’s life. _My_ life; _your_ life; _his_. Connected, but very separate. Messy choices and all. He does not get to pick and choose the parts he likes, and then leave out or lash out at the rest—or at you. That isn’t fair.”

Olivia massaged at her aching shoulder as she considered. “It isn’t _wholly_ unfair,” she conceded. “I promised him your safety. Skyhold and the Inquisition should have been safe harbour and instead—”

“They are,” she interrupted; a declaration that was met with a dubious look. “Really,” the Champion insisted. “I could not keep running. When I left that night, I had nowhere idea even where I would go. But I knew where I would end up: in his hands. I knew he could come. I expected it. Waited for it. Even wished for it, at one point. All knowing that he would…defile me…in every possible way…”

Olivia grimaced as Mallory trailed off, rubbing at her forehead between her knit-together brows. When her hand fell back into her lap, she resumed her fussing, but now a furious tugging rather than a gentle stroke of before. Eyes jammed closed, she started up her incantation again, only this time, Olivia could make it out. Not some magical spell or desperate prayer, but only…counting? Simple counting, breathy and frantic to start. Yet as it went on, a change set in. Her breathing slowed as her cadence did, the recitation becoming softer and quieter, until after forty-something she was completely inaudible. Her hands gradually settled, then stilled completely. Moments after that, when Mallory opened her eyes, they were sharp and clear again, and she carried on as if nothing was amiss.

“There is a reason for all of this. It had to be this way, so that I could be free. Free of them both,” she said, cryptically. “I’m only sorry that it came at your expense. But I would like for you to be the last casualty of my war.”

Though she did not say it expressly, the meaning was clear. _The Maker and his plans…_ An all-too-familiar chant that had been sung at Olivia a thousand times already; one that she was inexorably weary of. Yet she could not bring herself to deny the woman anything, least of all whatever faith she clung to, having endured more than her share and still found the tenacity to claw her own way back from her personal darkness. She never needed saving; only a moment to take a breath and find her footing. Olivia understood that well enough. Though the worlds they came from could scarcely be more opposite, she saw a great deal of herself reflected in Mallory’s bracing green stare.

“Well,” Mallory said, standing. “I’ve stolen enough of your time. Thank you, Inquisitor.”

“Olivia. Please.”

The Champion smiled. “You should come. Sit and eat with us. Everyone would like to see you. Varric, especially.”

“In a while, perhaps,” she replied, knowing it to be a hollow promise. Mallory headed for the door and grabbed the handle, but before she could pull, one final question popped to mind; one Olivia was not sure she wanted answered, but asked anyway. “Does it get easier?”

“Which part?”

“This.” She gestured ambiguously about the room with one finger. “Leading people. Having them rely on you...”

“You’re asking _me_? I was only ever trying to survive. Right from the start.” Mallory gave a breathy laugh. “And now you have to fix the world I helped to break. Sorry.”

It was about the answer she expected. “We’ll see,” she said, sighing. “Just surviving would be optimal.” She then flippantly added, “Any advice there? Since you _did_ break it, after all.”

“Let me see…Don’t antagonise the Chantry; don’t start a war with the Qunari; don’t, under _any_ circumstances, unleash an ancient darkspawn Magister…” Mallory replied, checking each one off on a finger. “You should ask Varric for the rest.”

The Inquisitor laughed. “I fear the ship has sailed on at least two of those. But I _will_ try not to start another war, with the Qunari or otherwise.”

“And I wish you luck with _that_ ,” Mallory retorted, grinning. “Seriously, though…If I could give you any advice, it’s this: be kind to the woman behind that desk. Friends, family, lovers…hold them close. Cherish them. Love them. Lean on them. But understand they can and will not always be there. Times will come when _you_ are all you have. So be cautious, and be kind, especially to her.”

Those parting words struck Olivia right in the chest; right down inside her crowded ribs and winded her, so that all she could manage by way of reply was to mouth a silent ‘Thank you’. Mallory pulled the door open and slipped out then, leaving her alone again. The ceiling lifted. The walls withdrew. Cool evening air gusted through the ample window, stirring the papers on the ground. She did not hear the crying of the door hinges at all. Rather, as she reached into her breast pocket for Cullen’s letter, a different howl broke the silence; that of her food-starved, but wine-heavy stomach.

Olivia hesitated. Deliberated. Frowned. Ultimately, she drew her empty hand away, leaving him there beside her heart, for now. Then, she pushed herself up from her chair.

Maybe she could eat, after all.


End file.
